“A state of leftovers is not going to do it,” Fayyad declares.

But is Netanyahu, a man of Likud who opposed the late Yitzhak Rabin’s Oslo compromise, not convinced deep in himself of the need to hold on to all of Eretz Israel (a biblical term widely used to refer to the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, encompassing all of the West Bank)? And are there not ministers in his new government, including Naftali Bennett, the economics minister, who enjoy dismissing the very idea of Palestine as a complete joke?

Well, Fayyad muses, perhaps the Israeli prime minister needs to say something like this to Israelis: “Yes, it is true we have a contract with God Almighty who gave us the land, but there happen to be 4.4 million other people on this land who want to exercise their right to self-determination, so perhaps we can adjust the divine contract a little.”

That won’t happen, of course. What will? Fayyad calls the new Obama administration initiative “high-risk.” Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to ease into Israeli-Palestinian negotiations buttressed by economic initiatives like tourism developments on the Dead Sea. But from a Palestinian standpoint, there seems to be little that would improve human conditions — deliver water, stop settler violence, end demolitions — and little to stop Netanyahu simply running the clock down again.

“Israel says no this, no that, and it’s taken as a foregone conclusion,” Fayyad says. “There’s nothing to underpin the U.S. initiative. So how can you invest in it?”

Despite his skepticism, Fayyad believes Palestinians do not have a moment to lose in the push for statehood. The essential missing ingredient is unity. There has to be one government in the West Bank (now controlled by Fatah) and Gaza (controlled by Hamas). “Let’s be clinical,” he says. “We are not going to have a state unless we are united first.”

The essential precondition for that, he says, is a “security doctrine based on nonviolence.” Hamas must irrevocably renounce violence. Then there would be “conditions for takeoff that would not be perfect, but when did the perfect ever prevail?”

A unity government could get on with managing day-to-day business and, above all, preparing the national elections needed to know where Palestinians actually stand. Seven years without an election is far too long. Neither Fatah nor Hamas rule has any democratic legitimacy. Their positions are untenable even as they cling to power.