White House Gives Up On Israeli-Palestinian Two State Solution Peace Deal

[Purveyor]

Source: Telegraph UK

For the first time in two decades, a the prospect of a negotiated two-state solution is not on the cards, admit White House officials

By Ruth Sherlock, US Editor

President Barack Obama has admitted there is no possibility of securing a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians and doubts whether he will even be able to get them back round the negotiating table while he is in office.

Ahead of the Washington visit of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister next week, Mr Obama has made a "realistic assessment" that a peace deal will not happen before he leaves office in January 2017, US officials said.

“The president has reached the conclusion that, barring a major shift, the parties are not going to be in the position to negotiate a final status agreement,” said Rob Malley, Mr Obama’s senior Middle East adviser.

It marked the first time in two decades where the White House “faces a reality where the prospect of a negotiated two-state solution is not in the cards,” Mr Malley told journalists.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/11981139/White-House-gives-up-on-Israeli-Palestinian-two-state-solution-peace-deal.html

[cpwm17]

1. Israel has never allowed it and will never allow it.

There's no possibility for it to ever work.

Even if a "state" were established for the Palestinians, it would really be a defenseless open-air prison camp controlled by Israel, which is little different from what is happening now. Israel has no ability to treat them in any other way but crap, and most of the Israelis do it without even the slightest amount of shame.

[6chars]

5. And yet the Palestinians want it so much

and have tried so hard to come up with a way to make it work.

[cpwm17]

7. Israel has much bigger guns and no desire to play nice. n/t

[JDPriestly]

8. The "right to return" obsession is what is not compatible with a two-state solution.

Most of the Palestinians talking about "right to return" never lived in what is now Israel, but they still hinder any hope of peace for themselves or their children by insisting on it.

EIther the Palestinians want peace and the better life that can come with it or they want a war and to return to the homes that are now Israeli's homes.

[Agony]

9. and yet...

some dude from Brooklyn can claim a hilltop in Judea or Samaria based on his right to return to his ancestral homeland
that he has never been anywhere near.
not sure how that is any less of a problem.

Craaaazzy….

[JDPriestly]

14. The dude from Brooklyn should check the title records on the hilltop and pay the guy who

has the title to it before he claims it.

Unless the United Nations says it is his.

And if some guy in Judea or Samaria thinks someone has taken his land, he should prove his title claim and ask to be paid for the land -- paid lots for the land.

That's the way that civilized people deal with disputes about possession of the title to land. But first you have to keep records that show who owns what. Surely there has been time since 1947 to establish a title registry in the area of Israel/Palestine.

If not, why not?

[sulphurdunn]

16. By the time of the 1949 armistace and establishment of the green line,

it is estimated that 700,000 Palestinians had been disposed of their property and entire communities had been uprooted. Most of them did not hold titles to the land and neither did the Israelis who took it. The UN has made it clear that the occupation and Israeli settlement of the West Bank since 1967 is illegal and that Israel owns not a square foot of it. So, the dude from Brooklyn is a squatter. In those rare cases where the dude can show title, he is legally bound to obey Palestinian laws. When he does not, he is a criminal. If he wishes to stay, he needs to work with the Palestinians. If he's unwilling to do that, he can go back to Brooklyn or move to Tel Aviv.

[smirkymonkey]

13. +1000

[Wellstone ruled]

2. AIPAC runs certain segments of our

State Department and until those individuals are gone,nothing will happen. Mr. Obama got Cheneied big time.

[paul ofnoclique]

3. The two-state solution died with Yitzhak Rabin eom

[cpwm17]

6. Yitzhak Rabin was only interested in creating a prison state for the Palestinians

pretty much what they have now, except, perhaps, without all the "settlement" building:
http://www.alternet.org/world/i-would-see-gaza-drown-sea-remembering-true-yitzhak-rabin-20-years-after-his-assassination-0

During his campaign in 1992, Rabin warned that a Palestinian state could only be established on the ruins of Israel. Indeed, Rabin was opposed to the creation of a viable Palestinian state, favoring instead a form of limited autonomy in Bantustan-style population centers overseen by dictatorial security forces that coordinated repression with the Israeli army.

“We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state,” Rabin explained in his final speech before the Knesset. He pledged to preserve a “united Jerusalem,” pledging not to cede control of the city’s occupied eastern areas for the establishment of a Palestinian capital.

Rabin’s aim, and that of his successors, was not co-existence with the Palestinians, but rather a form of hard separation that guarded Israel’s exclusively Jewish character. It was Rabin’s campaign vow in 1992 to “keep Gaza out of Tel Aviv” — to essentially wall off the Gaza Strip — that helped him secure the premiership. Months later, Rabin declared, “I would like to see Gaza drown in the sea.”

In any other context outside of US or Israel politics, Yitzhak Rabin would be described as a brutal thug.

[sulphurdunn]

15. And he was too accommodating

for the fanatics who murdered him.

[eggplant]

4. Certainly not while Netanyahu has any say in it.

Sigh.

[Eric J in MN]

10. Every US president for decades

...was probably pessimistic about helping create an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in his final year in office.

[Rod Beauvex]

11. So....

Are we going to stop giving Israel money, too?

[StoneCarver]

12. So go one state

The Palestinians will soon outnumber the Jewish people. Then Israel will have to decide if it's a democracy -or an apartheid state. Two states could have saved Israel -it's their own demise.
Stonecarver