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Occupied Jerusalem: Frustrated by years of on-and-off peace talks with Israel, Palestinians are losing hope for an independent homeland, and some are proposing a radically different cause: equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in a shared state.
A 'two-state solution' has been the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for nearly 15 years and remains the declared aim of both groups' highest elected leaders and the Bush administration. But its advocates are increasingly on the defensive, and not just against Islamists and Jewish colonists who have long opposed partitioning the land.
Majorities on both sides dismiss the current US-backed peace talks as futile. And a small but growing number of moderate Palestinians contends that Israel's terms for independence offer less than they could gain in a single democratic state combining Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In a flux
No Israeli leader accepts the idea of sharing power with Palestinians; none has even offered such a plan. But a collapse of the two-state effort would leave Israel in de facto control of a region where by the next generation, Jews will probably be in a minority.
That scenario inspires Hazem Kawasmi, who recently gave up on the two-state ideal and runs brainstorming workshops in the West Bank on single-state proposals. Sooner or later, the former Palestinian National Authority official predicts, the growing burden of occupation and threat of extremism would make Israelis receptive to the idea of a bi-national system that protects the rights of Jews.
Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 War, but efforts to incorporate the territories by encouraging massive Jewish colonies fell short. It took a generation after the war for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to recognise each other and start discussing statehood for the territories.
The Palestinians' rethinking of that goal has been influenced by Hamas. Its ascendancy has unnerved moderate Palestinians who don't want to be ruled by the Islamic group and made many in Israel more averse to a two-state accord.
"The number of people who believe in two states for two peoples is decreasing, and that worries me," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a Palestinian official.
Hebrew University and the Palestine Centre for Policy and Survey Research reported that three-fourths of the Palestinians and just more than half the Israelis they polled in March believe the talks serve no purpose and should be halted. Other polls show that at least one-fourth of all Palestinians favour a single state.
Fatah's leadership has begun a quiet, informal debate over its options if talks for an independent state fail. The emergence of one-state proposals, said Kadura Fares, a member of Fatah's revolutionary council, are "a sign that the current strategy has been exhausted and it's time to rethink all our goals".
Ali Jarbawi, an independent West Bank political scientist who advises the Palestinian leadership, has urged President Mahmoud Abbas to resign and abolish the government, which would oblige Israel to take direct responsibility for managing the West Bank and Gaza, and paying public employees.
Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University in occupied Jerusalem, said many Palestinians would feel more at home in a democracy shared with Israelis than in a Palestinian state run by Hamas.
"Such an idea of one country with two peoples, it will never happen," said Benjamin Ben Eliezer, infrastructure minister. "Bloodshed will happen. The Arabs will not accept us. We will not accept them."
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