Killing the two-state solution

[Resistance]

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/662/re3.htm

Encouraged by international inaction and American acquiescence, the extremist Israeli government of Ariel Sharon is trying to snuff out any remaining possibility for establishing a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank.

According to Israeli peace activists, the real strategic goal lying behind the wall is even more ambitious -- to make the daily life for Palestinians so unbearable to compel many to flee their country. But to where?

One Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity this week underscored a significant aspect of the Israeli-American relationship, saying "there is a tacit understanding between Israel and the United States whereby the Americans may make some public criticism of our policies and behaviour while we are free to pursue our agenda as we see fit."

To strengthen the Israeli policy of cornering and ghettoising the Palestinians, the Israeli army continues to disrupt Palestinian daily life on a scale unprecedented since the expulsion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland in 1948.

The Bush administration, at least on current indications, is unlikely to exert -- or even appear to exert -- real pressure on Israel over Sharon's policy decisions, apart, perhaps, from an occasional rebuke by White House and State Department spokespeople. Many believe, moreover, that there is not much the PA, or for that matter the rest of the world, can do against the United States' hands-off approach to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.