A former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia, says Israeli policies in Palestinian territory are making obsolete the two-state solution that has underpinned two decades of negotiations.
Qureia described the so-called peace process as “no more than a waste of time,” and condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for stepping up settlement activity in the West Bank and blocking Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem.
“If this is the policy, I think it is a big lie to talk about the two-state solution,” said Qureia. “They are killing the opportunity of two-state solution. If it dies … there are other choices.” Namely, he says, a one-state solution.
Israel’s expansion through settlements and other territorial claims in the West Bank has certainly intensified in recent years. Just this week, an Israeli committee retroactively “legalized” three major illegal outposts of Rehalim, Bruchin and Sansan.
Up to 6,578 new settlements have been built since 2008. In the process, to take just 2011, Israeli forces destroyed some 622 Palestinian homes, forcibly displacing over 1,100 people, over half of them children.
On Sunday, UN agencies in the West Bank condemned the Israeli government’s destruction of 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouins last week, making 54 people including 35 children homeless, along with the forced removal of refugees from two houses in East Jerusalem.
“The forced eviction of Palestine refugees and the demolition of Palestinian homes and other civilian structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is contrary to international law,” UNRWA’s West Bank director, Felipe Sanchez, said in the statement.
The collapse of the two-state solution on the internationally recognized borders has been predicted before. A recent report from the European Union warned that “if current trends are not stopped and reversed, the establishment of a viable Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders seem more remote than ever.” Unfortunately, given Israeli policy, that seems to be the intention.
Israeli President Shimon Peres told Haaretz on Monday that his government has missed opportunities to reach a deal with the Palestinians, placing most of the blame on his own Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he said does not believe in negotiations.
All of this happens with – and because of – U.S. support for Israel. Since 2008, Washington has sent Israel almost $14 billion, with another $3.1 billion slated for 2013, not to mention arms deals and security training. Any hope for a Palestinian state, after decades of military occupation and forced eviction from their homeland, is a fantasy unless Washington changes its policies toward Israel.
UN condemned the Israelis? And what does mere lip flapping do? How about some economic sanctions…. an embargo like that other apartheid regime experienced not so long ago? I mean, damn it all, if it were any other country there would be shouts from the roof top for doing as much.
there is only one nation on earth that favors a foreign nation over it's own
and the winner is the US congress….
which favors israel over the US every single day
What is amazing is how Israel forces the one state solution. The problem they have is how will they keep the majority when the actually accept that they are not occupying the land stolen in 1967? They have been master at keeping the minority in charge but I think that time is gone. Israel is headed towards a civil war between the secular and the ultra orthodox. When that division gets going the majority power of the religion is gone. The concept of the dual citizen is already on the way out. How many citizens of Israel do not even live there? Even the Israel military has rejected people of dual citizenship for some units. What more needs to be said but the people who created dual citizen for their benefit understand that a person cannot be loyal to two masters. The USA would be much better off if the eliminated dual citizens from certain jobs the most clear would be elected office.
One state means the end of religious control Israel. Ben Gurion understood this and begged for the leader of Israel not to attack in 1967.
This is the only solution I have been saying all along.The indigenous population should immediately start adjitating for inclusion into the jewish state even if it means second class citizenship for some years down the road . In the end they will be granted equal voting rights. World opinion will demand it. The jewish state will then be finished and peace will reighn over the middle east.
How does one say "Lebensraum" in Hebrew?
This has always been their goal. The only problem being the big lie about being a democracy. Their only problem is how to get rid of all the inconvenient Semites, Christians or Muslim who don't count in their theocracy. They have been brutalized, starved, robbed, and killed but still refuse to leave their homeland. The Russians led by Lieberman seem to want to just kill them and force the survivors over the border at gunpoint like they did in 1948. The US, at the behest of the evangelical "Christians" , is doing its best to make the Middle East a Christian free zone. This makes Israel the biggest anti-Semitic country on Earth.
Biggest ever Evil on this planet – internacional Zionism – /simple brutal colonial ideology/ – with its only "child" …place called Israel.
Whats the difference looking back to human history to "middle ages", condeming horrors of naked aggression, teft of land and wars with primitive weapons? What will the future historiens talk about, how they will marvel about "our times", when the absurdity and colosal injustice was taking place for all to see. And people did not stop it. Teft of land by Zionist regime is like "Big Brother" 24 hours daily show….
Or if anybody suddently came from other planet to solve this ongoing "robbery of land " and was acquinted with record of this colonization, saw "the place not recognizing basig internacional laws and norms", what would be his likely proposition?
I bet, He would propose "dissolution of this criminal enterprice" and disarming this "syndicate" of its dangerous weapons, especialy arsenal of undeclared WMD…..
Only then could Humanity make BIG step towards endless peace …for all.
"Up to 6,578 new settlements have been built since 2008. In the process, to take just 2011, Israeli forces destroyed some 622 Palestinian homes, forcibly displacing over 1,100 people, over half of them children."
This is a continuation of the Naqba of 1947-8. This has been Zionism's method from the beginning; slowly but surely displacing the Arab inhabitants of the land, replacing them with Jews from North America or Europe.
And here we are, just talking about it as usual.
We are still supposed to see Israel as the victim, with Obama falling over himself to pile on the pressure against Iran,against any Palestinian breakthrough, pretendng to hate "Bibi" while giving in on every point.The US vetoes, the gifts, the ridiculous Iron Dome and the illegal walls ghettoing the poor, helpless, nuke-hiding, overarmed, cruel, lying chosen ones make a two-state or even a peaceful one state impossible. The Palestinians are just supposed to be pushed off the face of the earth. Who will stop this?
Documentation released since the fall of East Germany show that Hitler's chief war aims included vast settlement of 'Germanic' people in the rich lands of Poland and Ukraine. People who lived there would be 'relocated'. Perfectly legitimate spoils of war policy—to a Nazi. Israel won the West Bank from Jordan when an idiot Egyptian general half-accidentally launched a pathetic attack upon Jerusalem with Jordanian troops. Spoils of war, people to be relocated? Who were the bad guys again?
What gave that one away? When that finally happens (which will be very soon), all the Palestinians have to do is screw and reproduce like crazy. Within a few decades, they will be the majority and then, they can kick ass and take what's theirs back. I can only hope that the Palestinians will be kinder to the jews that they have been to the Palestinians or there will be hell to pay.
you make a theoretical point JW
On the ground israeli fascists are able to expand ethnic cleansing with building restrictions, olive crop incineration, water access and routine demolitions – all with US EU help and Saudi royal complicity. All this does is breed increasingly bitter conflicts and advances extremists on all sides. The powder keg to explode is when israeli extremists encroach on sacred spaces. So, will this dispute play out demographically over time or will strife escalate into civil war and at any time.