Decapitating the two-state solution

The new Israeli government, to be elected later this month, with continuing settlement policies, is likely to put an end to the remaining chances for a two-state solution

On 22 January, Israel will hold general elections which pundits predict will produce the most extremist and anti-peace government ever since the creation of the Jewish state more than 64 years ago.
The new government, expected to comprise the most jingoistic and Talmudic-minded elements of the Israeli right, will conceivably kill whatever remaining chances for salvaging a peace deal with the Palestinians based on the two-state solution vision.
Prospects for reaching such a deal look quite bleak as Israel has taken a plethora of decisions aimed at making the Palestinians' goal of establishing a viable state in the West Bank utterly unrealistic if not outright impossible.
In recent weeks, especially in the aftermath of the recent UN General Assembly resolution, which recognized Palestine as an observer non-member state, the Israeli government announced plans to build thousands of settler units in occupied Arab East Jerusalem as well as the rest of the West Bank.
One of the settlement enterprises being discussed is the creation of a "mega settlement" between Arab-East Jerusalem and the colony of Maali Adomim, 4 kilometers eastward.
The new colony would effectively cut off the West Bank's northern half from its southern part. It would also hermetically separate Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied territory. In other words, the planned colony would put an end to Palestinian hopes for a territorially-contiguous state, especially one with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel has already established so many Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank that very few serious observers still see the possibility of establishing a truly viable Palestinian state.
Israel has also embarked on a rabid campaign of house-demolitions and land confiscations in parts of the West Bank especially in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
Jewish commentators argue rather convincingly that it would be highly unlikely to expect any prospective Israeli government to dismantle settlements, a sin-qua-non for any successful rehabilitation of the moribund peace process. This state of affair is further enforcing by the fact that the Israeli Jewish society is moving steadily to the right.
Lying like breathing
Notwithstanding, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, never stop claiming a sincere commitment to peace with the Palestinians. However the utter mendacity of such claims is exposed by Israel's actions on the ground, actions that have drawn strong condemnation by the entire international community, including Israel's traditional allies in North America and Europe .
Israel claims to really desire and strive for peace. However, the Jewish state aspires to translate this alleged desire for peace by building hundreds of colonies on Palestinian territory, inhabited by the most virulent, racist, and genocidal Jewish elements anywhere.
A few years ago, a settler leader by the name of Daniela Weiss told settlers in Hebron that the proper way of dealing with the Palestinians and non-Jews in general was the Biblical way.
For those who don't understand the phraseology of the Jewish-Zionist lexicon, the Zionist leader was alluding to genocidal ethnic cleansing, including the physical extermination of men, women and children.
Daniella Weiss and those likely to dominate Israel's political scene for several years to come, including the explicitly fascist party, Habayt hayehudi, or the Jewish home, offer the Palestinians three choices": First, enslavement to the Chosen people or Master Race as water carrier and wood hewers. The Second choice is expulsion to the Arabian Desert. And if the Palestinians refuse the two previous choices, then they would have to face the "Joshua option", namely physical annihilation.
This is not Palestinian propaganda aimed at besmirching the good image of the "only democracy in the Middle East."
Israeli leaders never really lost an opportunity voicing their nefarious designs against the Palestinian people. Take for example Israel's former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The former Moldovan immigrant was quoted on several occasions as calling for blanket-bombing Palestinian population centers while leaving the border crossings with Jordan open. He also urged the Israeli army to drown Palestinian political and resistance activists in the Dead Sea.
Interestingly, Lieberman is already the number-2 leader at the Israeli political arena. In a few weeks, the thuggish politician's powers are expected to increase significantly as a result of the elections.
Open-ended conflict
With the two-state solution reaching real dead-end, the only alternative would be the continuation and escalation of the conflict. The Palestinian Authority is unlikely to survive the recalcitrance of the upcoming Israeli government, especially if the recently-approved settlement projects are implemented.
This means the Palestine question will return to square one, with the Palestinian people languishing under the sinister –Israeli military occupation as they were before the conclusion of the hapless Oslo Accords.
Needless to say, the Palestinian masses would once again resort to passive and active resistance against the longest occupation in modern history. Israel, for its part, would behave characteristically by violently and bloodily repressing any new uprising.
Eventually, there would be a tremendous public pressure on those Arab states that maintain peace treaties with Israel -Egypt and Jordan- to unilaterally cancel these treaties under public pressure. After all, the ordinary man and woman in the streets of Cairo and Amman wouldn't content themselves with watching their Palestinian brothers and sisters being mercilessly murdered by the ruthless Zionist machine of death.
In fact, Israel has no logical solution for resolving the Palestinian problem, apart from offering Palestinians a deformed state on a small part of their ancestral homeland. But the Palestinians wouldn't accept the de facto liquidation of their national cause even under the rubric of a state that is not worthy of the name.
Eventually, Israel would resort to a malignant form of apartheid, one designed to drive them away.
However, as 65 years of de-facto apartheid utterly failed to get the Palestinians to leave, the Israeli policy would eventually prove self-defeating. Besides, apartheid and repression in Palestine could pose a heavy moral and political burden to Israel's guardian-ally, the United States, and might even create a serious rift between Israel and world Jewry.
More to the point, with the possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state virtually nonexistent due to settlement aggrandizement, the Palestinian would start demanding equal rights in a democratic, unitary and bi-national state extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean.
This is anathema for most Israeli Jews since it would make Israel lose its Zionist Jewish identity. And in light of already existing demographic realities, where for the first time since 1948 the Palestinians have a demographic numerical advantage over Israeli Jews, Israeli leaders would have to make really hard choices.
Some of those preferring to see the half-full glass rather the half-empty one might argue that the international community would not allow the conflict in Palestine to deteriorate into a perpetual showdown between Jews and Muslims.
Nonetheless, and given the experience of more than 60 years of peace-making efforts, it is safe to argue that the US and Europe lack the ability to force a manifestly arrogant and fascist Israel to give up the spoils of war.
Indeed, the Jewish domination of American politics is too strong to allow any American administration to say "No" to Israeli whims and vagaries without committing political suicide.
In the last analysis, the US government cannot even force Israel to stop demolishing a single Arab home in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, let alone compel the Jewish state to give up the territories that Israel occupied in 1967.
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