Last week, Peter Beinart wrote an essay for Jewish Currents and an op-ed for the New York Times stating that he no longer believes in the project of a Jewish state, and instead favors a “Jewish home” within a democratic, equal state. Beinart, one of the foremost intellectuals of the progressive American Jewish community, had been an outspoken advocate of a two-state solution for many years. He has held up the hope that liberal democracy is possible within the construct of a Jewish state. Now he’s declared that vision dead.

“The painful truth,” he wrote, “is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades — a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews — has failed. The traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israel’s current path. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish-Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish-Palestinian equality.”

Jacobin’s Hadas Thier recently spoke with Beinart about the articles and his own political trajectory on the question of Israel and Palestine. The conversation has been edited for clarity.