The no-state solution

On January 28, 2024, a large event was hosted by a number of local institutions in Victoria, Canada, to discuss a “no-state solution” to the area between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. The idea of no-state was understood to foreground the virtues of free association, multiple loyalties, and uncoerced order — all as counterweights to centralized control, militarized states, fanatic loyalties, and permanent mobilization of populations. The no-state approach to solutions was presented as being more faithful to historical patterns of life in the region, and also to be no less realistic than state-based approaches — all of which have demonstrably failed, repeatedly and catastrophically.