Palestine now a non-member observer state thanks to landslide UN Vote, US pissed off

In moving forward with long-threatened plans to develop E1, Israel will be breaking the back of the West Bank and isolating the capital of the prospective Palestinian state from its hinterland. In so doing, it will be terminating once and for all the very prospect of that state — and with it, by definition, any lingering possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Oddly enough, the Palestine recognized by the United Nation is only an abstraction; the one that Israel is now about to throttle is much more real, at least insofar as the throttling will materially affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in a way that mere recognition does not.

However heavy the blow to Palestinian aspirations, an equally heavy political price for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s E1 plan will be paid by Israelis. For by terminating the prospect of a two-state solution, Netanyahu will also be sealing the fate of an exclusively Jewish state.

As cannier Israeli politicians (Ehud Olmert among them) have long warned, maintaining the existence of Israel as a Jewish state fundamentally requires perpetuating at least the idea of a Palestinian state, even if only as a deferred fiction kept alive through endless negotiations.

Once the fiction of a separate Palestinian state is revealed to have no more substance than the Wizard of Oz — which the E1 plan will all but guarantee — those Palestinians who have not already done so will commit themselves to the only viable alternative: a one-state solution, in which the idea of an exclusively Jewish state and an exclusively Palestinian one will yield to what was really all along the preferable alternative, a single democratic and secular state in all of historical Palestine that both peoples will have to share as equal citizens.

A campaign for rights and equality in a single state is a project toward which the Palestinians will now be able to turn with the formidable international support they have already developed at both the diplomatic and the grassroots levels, including a global boycott and sanctions movement whose bite Israel has already felt.

For Palestinians, in any case, one state is infinitely preferable to two, for the simple reason that no version of the two-state solution that has ever been proposed has meaningfully sought to address the rights of more than the minority of Palestinians who actually live in the territory on which that state is supposed to exist . . .

What must be added here is that if a one-state solution offers the last remaining key to a just and lasting peace, Israeli Jews will pay what will turn out to be only a short-term price in exchange for many long-term gains. Like Palestinians, they will lose the dream and the prospect of a state exclusively their own. But — also like Palestinians — what they will gain in turn is the right to live in peace.

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/12/makdisi-e1-sets-the-stage-for-one-state.html

 

I guess the US foreign policy establishment is really concerned about the E1 land grab by the Israelis. When you have a house organ of the establishment like ABC News writing a story like this.

Very interesting. As someone who would see a one state solution as a major victory for international democracy, the rule of law and also for religious freedom and equality of religion I can't say that I would be sorry to see the two state solution go away.

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Palestinians: Settlement Expansion Means 1 State

Text Size- / +By By KARIN LAUB Associated Press
RAMALLAH, West Bank December 4, 2012 (AP)

The Palestinians will ask the U.N. Security Council to call for an Israeli settlement freeze, President Mahmoud Abbas and his advisers decided Tuesday, as part of an escalating showdown over Israel's new plans to build thousands more homes on war-won land in and around Jerusalem.

Such construction will destroy any lingering hopes of setting up a Palestinian state, Abbas aides warned, as international anger over the settlement construction snowballed.

Israel announced the new plans after the U.N. last week recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — lands Israel occupied in 1967 — as a non-member observer.

The plans include 3,000 more homes for Jews in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, as well as preparations for construction of an especially sensitive project near Jerusalem, known as E-1.

Separately, Israel is moving forward with two major settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Israel would build more than 4,200 apartments in the two areas, Ramat Shlomo and Givat Hamatos.
...The Palestinians say E-1 and Givat Hamatos are particularly problematic because they would cut off east Jerusalem, the intended Palestinian capital, from the rest of the West Bank.

Israel's plans for E-1 and Givat Hamatos "will leave us with no peace process," Saeb Erekat, a senior Abbas aide, told The Associated Press.

He later told Israel TV that "it's over" if these two settlements are built.

"Don't talk about peace, don't talk about a two-state solution ... talk about a one-state reality between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean," Erekat said, referring to the land that the international community hopes will one day accommodate both Israel and a Palestinian state.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague sounded a similar warning Tuesday, telling Britain's parliament that Israel's building plans would make a Palestinian state alongside Israel "almost inconceivable."

http://abcnews.go.com/International...erusalem-building-plans-17872893#.UL8BymdN-S4

 

Are Big Energy Companies Rogue Organizations that Will End the Planet

delete

 

Israel 1 state solution + climate change = end of days?

 

lol sleep deprived I'll claim.

the above was meant to be a new thread.

let me redo.

 

Seems like a two state solution would still be perfectly feasible, the capital of the Palestinian state would just not be in Jerusalem, it would be in Ramallah (where the current government is located).

 

It's silly that places like Narau get a vote and Palestine does not.
I mean freaking Palau!??! Is there anything to that place besides some indigenous people that we'll hear from only when Survivor decides to shoot a season over there?