Posted on 03/01/2009 8:07:56 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Hillary Clinton starts her first tour of the Middle East as Secretary of State today with a mandate to reinvigorate collapsed peace talks.
She will find, however, that support for a two-state solution – the central plank in US-led efforts to tackle the crisis for almost two decades – is at a record low.
Not only is it waning on the Israeli side, which is under the new leadership of the right-wing hawk Binyamin Netanyahu, but it is also collapsing among Palestinians, who increasingly view the Oslo peace process, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) that was formed under it, as dead.
Palestinian officials and civil leaders told The Times that their governing body was all but defunct and would either waste away or turn into a kind of Vichy regime providing a cover for Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank. Many Palestinian civil leaders believe that time is running out for a two-state solution, thanks mainly to increasing Jewish settlement activity and Israel’s refusal to relinquish military positions.
Some Palestinians even said that if Israel did not soon agree to statehood, the Palestinians should abandon dreams of independence and confront the Jewish state with its worst nightmare – a one-state solution, in which Arabs would, in decades to come, outnumber Jews. “Oslo is dying and so of course is the Palestinian Authority,” said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician and head of the increasingly popular Palestinian National Initiative. “They are transforming the authority into a security subagent for Israel. It’s becoming a Bantustan government, a Vichy,” he said.
“The PA is a house with nothing inside,” said Qaddura Fares, a veteran Fatah member and former MP. In an attempt to establish the PA as a credible government, senior British and US army officers have been seconded to train the Palestinian
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Why is it that Israel has to bear the full loss of territory for the Palestinian terrorists to have their own state? Israel is one of the smallest (geographically) in the world... They have Muslim neighbors with vast expanses of land that is basically uninhabited that could easily and painlessly be given to the Palestinians for a “homeland” - no fuss, no muss.
I suspect the REAL reason none of the Muslim neighbors who so loudly advocate for a Palestinian state carved out of ISRAEL’s SOVEREIGN territory want to give up their own land - that would mean the Palestinians are that much closer to THEM. This would also remove the “useful tool” moniker for the Palestinians - who the rest of the Muslim world have been using as a pawn against Israel for decades.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
When running for the senate in NY, didn’t Hillary claim to have Jewish blood in her. The Palestinians are sure to love her I know.
ZerO, the resident, has her on a goose chase to get her out of his hair. First Asia where nothing was accomplished, now the middle east where nothing can/will be accomplished.
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