Status quo won't hold, warn Middle East experts| Reuters
"There is no bilateral solution," said Gershon Baskin of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information. "The fastest road to the next round of violence is through another failed negotiation process ... and it has zero chance."
In remarks endorsed by Palestinian and Arab participants, he said 2009 had been "a wasted year." Next year could be "ripe for peace, but also ripe for an explosion" unless the Russians, the Europeans and the United Nations stepped up their role.
Former Russian Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov warned that a "real crisis" could develop that may strengthen the position of radical elements in the Muslim world and fuel a religious war, if the international community did not intervene.
The so-called Middle East Quartet (the United States, United Nations, Russia and the European Union) had not played enough of a role, Primakov said.
It should set out a constructive foundation for a settlement and make its recommendations to the parties, and set a time-frame for a peace conference.
"FUTILE AND IN VAIN"
In a straight-talking session of Russia's Valdai Club, Israeli speakers rejected charges that Israel was putting itself above the law, relying on power to prolong its occupation of the West and Bank, and closing its eyes to the wider risks.
"If it was not for the Israel Defense Forces, with our soldiers patrolling, the West Bank would be like Gaza," said retired IDF general Jacob Amidror. Palestinians in 2006 had voted for the Islamist movement Hamas, he reminded the conference.
Hamas rejects peace with Israel and is now in control of the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, pledged to continue armed struggle to liberate all Palestinian lands.
Israelis would "not be stupid enough" to come to a proposed Moscow conference "where all the participants would be against us, like they are here," Amidror added.
"And don't sell us this nonsense that all regional conflicts will be resolved" as soon as Israel signed a treaty swapping land for peace and creating a Palestinian state," he added.
Primakov said the remarks "show the very radical views against peace in Israel, and they're probably quite widespread."
But he said a Moscow conference was only conceivable once the current deadlock was broken by the Quartet's presentation of a framework for talks defining the core issues.
Speakers clashed on whether an international force could relieve Israeli security fears. ...
Forget the two-state solution -- latimes.com
All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that -- after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war -- Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.
Sixty years after Israel was created and Palestine was destroyed, then, we are back to where we started: Two populations inhabiting one piece of land. And if the land cannot be divided, it must be shared. Equally.
This is a position, I realize, which may take many Americans by surprise. After years of pursuing a two-state solution, and feeling perhaps that the conflict had nearly been solved, it's hard to give up the idea as unworkable.
But unworkable it is. A report published last summer by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that almost 40% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure -- roads, settlements, military bases and so on -- largely off-limits to Palestinians. Israel has methodically broken the remainder of the territory into dozens of enclaves separated from each other and the outside world by zones that it alone controls (including, at last count, 612 checkpoints and roadblocks).
Moreover, according to the report, the Jewish settler population in the occupied territories, already approaching half a million, not only continues to grow but is growing at a rate three times greater than the rate of Israel's population increase. If the current rate continues, the settler population will double to almost 1 million people in just 12 years. Many are heavily armed and ideologically driven, unlikely to walk away voluntarily from the land they have declared to be their God-given home.
These facts alone render the status of the peace process academic.
CAMERA: LA Times Op-Ed Calls For Dismantlement of Jewish State
In the past, the Los Angeles Times marked Israel's birthday with an Op-Ed calling for its dismantlement via the so-called "one-state solution." The paper didn't bother to wait for the spring anniversary of the Jewish state's founding, presenting its readers yesterday with another call for a "one-state solution."Jonathan Kuttab's Dec. 20, 2009 Op-Ed ("Steps to Create Israel-Palestine"), like earlier pieces by Saree Makdisi (here and here) and Tony Judt which called for the destruction of the Jewish state, rests on a number of basic factual errors and faulty assumptions.
From the Mediterranean to the Jordan River
Haaretz Exclusive: EU draft document on division of Jerusalem - Haaretz - Israel News
The current holder of the rotating European Union presidency, Sweden, has put together a draft document calling for the division of Jerusalem between Israel and a future Palestinian state and implying that the EU would recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood.
Haaretz has obtained a copy of the document (below) that has sparked criticism by Israel, which claims that such a move would further harm the chances of renewing the Mideast peace process.
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