J Street’s Aidan Jelinek brings West Bank report to Pittsburgh

As violence continues in the West Bank and prospects for a traditional two-state solution appear increasingly remote, Aidan Jelinek argues it’s time to widen the lens. Speaking in Pittsburgh, the J Street activist said he supports a “23-state solution” — a regional framework he believes could normalize Israel’s relationship with the Arab world while laying groundwork for Palestinian statehood.

Jelinek is J Street’s assistant regional director of engagement in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, and a 2025-2026 Naomi Chazan Global Activism Fellow. He spoke in Pittsburgh on Feb. 18 at the J Street program “Report Back on Israel and the West Bank,” held at the Carnegie Library in Squirrel Hill.

An Australian — born to a father from Melbourne and a mother from Detroit, Michigan, who met in the Jewish state — Jelinek spent a gap year between high school and college living on Kibbutz Ma’agan Mikha’el in northern Israel. The time there, he said, left him “obsessed with understanding what was happening — the conflict, the politics of Israel, the politics of the Arab world, all of it.”

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He majored in international relations and religious studies at Monash University in Melbourne, before earning a master’s degree from the same university in international relations. His thesis was what he called a “case study” on Hamas, looking at the way the group engages in conflict, its reasons and justifications for it, how it interacts with Israel and how it uses radicalization to rally the population.

After leaving school, Jelinek was hired by J Street, becoming the organization’s West Coast coordinator, before taking his current position.

He recently visited the West Bank as part of the New Israel Fund’s Naomi Chazan Global Activism Fellowship.

“We spoke with some politicians, as well as civil society — both Israeli and Palestinian — and met with groups that are trying to promote peace and working to promote coexistence with one another and, eventually, lead to a two-state solution,” he said.

And while Jelinek said both he and J Street support a free, democratic Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state, talk about a two-state solution is “exceptionally challenging” right now.

Instead, he said, J Street is attempting to frame the conversation as a “23-state solution.”

“This is the idea that Israel can be integrated and normalized with Arab society and the Arab world, looking at regional security deals that bring Israel into the fold with its Arab neighbors,” he said.

He noted that one of the conditions of that solution — which he said is similar to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan — is the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

While in the West Bank, Jelinek met Rabbi Avi Dabush, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, who was on a kibbutz that was attacked on Oct. 7.

“He told us stories of holding his door and hearing Arabic outside,” Jelinek said. “He could speak Arabic so he could understand the horrible things these Hamas fighters were saying. But he still works for a group that is trying to promote peace and coexistence.”

Jelinek visited Palestinian villages and Israel settlements. He noted that some of the settlements were legal and “looked like a full community.”

“What was really shocking to me, which I hadn’t seen before, were the illegal outposts, illegal even by Israeli law,” he said.

A group of settlers, he said, initially blocked his group from visiting a Palestinian village before retreating.

“Then the IDF came, but they didn’t come for any kind of support; they came to issue eviction notices to this community which was now within a firing range,” he said.

Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’ attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023. The number of attacks by extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank rose by 27% in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to data recorded by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency.

The number of severe incidents of “nationalistic crime” by settler extremists, classified by Israeli security bodies as terrorism, also rose by over 50%, The Times of Israel reported. There are approximately 300 Jewish extremists involved in the violent attacks living in 42 illegal outposts across the West Bank, according to the news agency.

Palestinian attacks on Jews in the West Bank continued throughout 2025 as well, although there were fewer incidents than there were in 2024. Last year, there were 57 terror attacks recorded by the IDF, leading to the deaths of 20 people, The Times of Israel reported.

Despite the deepening conflicts in the West Bank, Jelinek said he believes peace is possible.

“I do feel that there’s an opportunity to go forward and create peace with a lot of the Arab states, who would be willing to normalize and deal with Israel under some form of regional security plan, but they can’t justify it while Israel is doing what it’s doing to the Palestinians,” he said.

Jelinek acknowledged that Hamas is a “blood thirsty organization” that has controlled the Gaza Strip and no longer has a legitimate claim to power. At the same time, he opined, moderate aspects of Palestinian society have been undercut by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The international community, he said, must help push the extremist aspects of Palestinian society aside.

He hopes, he said, that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, comprised of 15 independent Palestinian technocrats and set to succeed Hamas, will work with the Palestinian Authority toward a lasting peace.

J Street Pittsburgh member Arlene Weiner said many Americans go to Israel, but not so many go to the West Bank. She noted that there’s been a lot of attention on Gaza but not as much on the West Bank and that “it’s something we really need to know about.”

“Sometimes settlers are acting in impunity in ways that I think we would want to disown,” she said.

Weiner acknowledged that the issue is divisive and “complicated.”

It’s her hope that people will learn from Jelinek’s visit and engage in honest conversations about the situation on the ground in the West Bank.

For his part, Jelinek hoped his takeaways would present an opportunity for an “open conversation.”

“I think that’s the only way we can move forward,” he said. “We need to have an open and honest conversation about Israel without getting sucked into, ‘is it anti-Israel or pro-Israel,’ but being able to talk about it amongst ourselves as a community like it’s a country capable of doing very good and very bad things, just like any other country.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.