Palestinian two-state solution steadily fading

Lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has some expecting one-state reality

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Occupied Jerusalem: Conventional wisdom on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has long held that Israel should relinquish most of the lands it occupied in 1967 in favour of a Palestinian state — the two-state solution that much of the world has supported for years.

But the utter lack of progress in peace talks and continued Jewish colony growth in the West Bank has many people warning that Israel might instead be headed toward a one-state reality, with a permanent occupation of the West Bank and a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority — unless, perhaps, the world forces it to give the Palestinians the right to vote.

"If Israel continues with these measures that it is employing today, the possibility of a two-state solution becomes very slim, if any," Mohammad Ishtayeh, a senior adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Sunday. "In the long run Israel is in the losing track. The Israeli leadership today is very shortsighted."

Hardly a concession

The startling departure from the widely accepted notion of Israel as the stronger side is increasingly common and a function of demographics: in the contiguous land mass formed by Israel proper and the areas the Palestinians want for their state, Arabs have probably caught up to the Jews numerically, and they have the higher birth rate. Viewed through this prism, it is in Israel's vital interest — hardly a "concession" — to seek partition.

Ishtayeh said the "two-state solution is a win-win situation" for both sides, and warned: "If Israel loses this opportunity then you are going into the ‘South Africanisation' of the Palestinian question" — a situation in which a minority rules over a disenfranchised majority, and that majority demands equal rights in a shared state.

Officially, both sides remain committed to the US-led effort, which began in September, to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state within a year.

But those talks ran aground three weeks after they began, when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended a 10-month freeze on new Jewish colony construction in the West Bank, prompting a Palestinian walkout. The Obama administration last week announced it was ending two months of efforts to coax Israel into resuming the freeze.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev insisted the 120 West Bank colonies — home to 300,000 people — only encompassed a small part of West Bank territory and noted that Israel pulled some 8,000 colonisers out of Gaza in 2005.

The Palestinians are already running a parallel track, lobbying nations to recognise a Palestinian state in the entire West Bank, Gaza and Occupied East Jerusalem — without Israeli acquiescence.

What if that effort fails? Abbas himself has spoken of resigning, declaring the Palestinian Authority — an autonomy government set up as an interim phase in the 1990s — defunct.

Their only weapon

"It is a serious threat, maybe the only serious threat and the only real weapon the Palestinians have," said Yossi Beilin, a veteran peace negotiator and former senior Israeli Cabinet minister.

"Then the responsibility is back with Israel."

Meanwhile, Israel is creating facts on the ground with the construction of hundreds of new housing units in the West Bank. Each additional coloniser, critics warn, deepens an already great intertwining of the two peoples and will make it more difficult to carve out a separate Palestine.

"There is a right-wing government that refuses to halt [colony] construction, encourages Jews to move to the West Bank, and is leading us to an irreversible situation," said Arnon Soffer, who is a professor emeritus of geostrategy at the University of Haifa.

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