Jerusalem, May 10: As negotiators begin indirect talks with the ultimate aim of creating a Palestinian state next to Israel, voices on both sides are warning that the opportunity for a two-state solution has already slipped away, or at best is fading fast.
“Definitely the fight for a two-state solution is obsolete,” says Meron Benvenisti, a former Israeli deputy mayor of occupied Jerusalem and veteran observer of Palestinian-Israeli relations.
“I don’t think it’s too late, but it’s about to be,” said Palestinian analyst and former cabinet minister Ghassan Khatib. “Time is our enemy.”
Creating a sovereign Palestinian state living at peace alongside Israel has been the centrepiece of international diplomatic efforts for years, but swathes of illegal Jewish settlement dissecting the West Bank and East Jerusalem have made that goal look increasingly unviable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party dislikes the prospect of Palestinian statehood, but the premier conditionally endorsed the idea for the first time last June.
Benvenisti envisages some form of federation comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“The only solution that can work in these conditions is powersharing and soft boundaries,” he said at a recent briefing. “Meaning not sovereign borders, and the creation of a system of powersharing that would satisfy the ethnic demands of both sides.”
To most Israelis, the idea of sharing a state with the Palestinians is a non-starter.
With the Palestinian birthrate much higher than that of Jewish Israelis, it is only a matter of time before the Jews would become a minority in a binational state.
“The raison d’etre of the state of Israel is a Jewish state, there is no room (in it) for the other side,” says Ron Pundak, an architect of the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
“I still believe that the two-state solution is a practical solution,” he said. “I still believe that we haven’t missed the train.”
But Pundak has little faith that the fledgling indirect talks will bring Palestinian statehood and an end to the conflict any closer.
“It’s an exercise in futility, a waste of time,” he said.
Some on the right, including in the Likud, publicly advocate passing control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip back to Jordan and Egypt, which administered them from 1948 until 1967.
But Egypt and Jordan seem unlikely to oblige. Neither will the Palestinians, the original inhabitants of the Israeli-occupied land, which also includes East Jerusalem.
Arguing for an Israeli-Palestinian federal state, Benvenisti says the two-state plan can no longer meet the aspirations of what have over the years become separate Palestinian societies.
The West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip are separated by about 35 kilometres (22 miles) of Israeli territory and Israel maintains draconian restrictions on who may cross.
In Palestinian East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, 270,000 Palestinians live in a limbo where they are classed as Israeli residents but are not citizens.
In addition, there are nearly 1.3 million Palestinians who took Israeli citizenship after Israeli independence in 1948 — known as Arab Israelis — but complain they are treated as second class citizens.
“The Israeli Palestinians have nothing to do with (the two-state plan),” said Benvenisti.
–Agencies