Two-State Solution Coffin Now Made Entirely Of Nails

Jerusalem, April 15 – The latest iteration of failed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations means that the metaphorical coffin of the vision of two states for two peoples has had so many nails driven into it that the quantity of wood composing it has been reduced to negligibility, according to a new assessment.

Experts who have been monitoring the on-again, off-again talks for years have frequently resorted to the description of various unilateral measures as additional nails in the coffin of the so-called Peace Process aimed at enabling a peaceful Palestine alongside a secure Israel. However, with the latest breakdown in talks, the Palestinians have resorted to unprecedented moves in a bid to threaten Israel with international marginalization, prompting Israeli retaliatory measures and driving yet another rivet into the casket. The newest nail reduces the ratio of mahogany to iron to 1:968 as a measure of mass and 1:729 in terms of volume, bringing the coffin over the threshold beyond which it cannot be accurately described as being made of wood.

Long an indicator of repeated disappointments, the application of additional nails to the coffin of a notion or goal is generally meant to highlight the insurmountability of maintaining the pursuit of that goal, but has not previously resulted in the accumulation of nails to the extent that they effectively replaced the wood in the coffin, according to historian Klee Schay. “In all documented cases, at some point the party or parties pursuing the goal contained within the coffin had the sense to give up long before the situation deteriorated this far past pointlessness,” he explained. “But for some reason, successive American presidential administrations have kept at pushing Israel and the Palestinians toward an unattainable compromise, compromise that, one way or another, would deny the historical legitimacy of somebody’s narrative and attachment to the land.”

The last time any coffin came close to becoming primarily nails, let alone composed entirely of them, was during the First World War, when British, French, and to some extent, German, generals repeatedly added nails the the coffin of the idea that they saw their soldiers as actual humans instead of cannon fodder. The addition of more nails was in any case rendered impossible by the irrelevance of coffins for countless dead soldiers whose remains were never found.