The two-state solution is dead and “It is now a matter of when, not if, the West Bank boils over into violent protests,” write the Huffington Post UK’s Political Director Mehdi Hasan in a recent column.

In the article, Hasan cites, among others, Israel’s former chief of general staff, General Shaul Mofaz, who has recently said, “We are on the verge of a third intifada.”

But, more to the point, Hasan believes the impending violence is the direct result of not a stalled, but a dead peace process: “There is no peace; there is no process,” he writes.

Hasan, who has in the past taken Muslims in the UK to task for anti-Semitism, says that the the main culprit is Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria and an Israeli government willingly enabling settlers.

“The settlements…have rendered a two-state solution impossible. The evidence for this? ‘The idea that a Palestinian state will be formed in the land of Israel has come to a dead end,’ declared the former Yesha Council leader Naftali Bennett on 17 June. ‘Today there are 400,000 Israeli residents of Judaea and Samaria and another 250,000 in eastern Jerusalem.’”

He also cites Dani Dayan, the outgoing chairman of the Yesha council, who in an interview published by al-Jazeera English said: “The conflict right now has no solution.”

Hasan continues: “Whether we want to admit it or not, the settlers have won — they have what they call a ‘wet dream’ government, protecting and promoting their interests.”

As proof, he points to the fact that settlers make up 5% of Israel’s population but more than 10% of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

And what does Hasan see as an alternative? “Stark” options: “either a democratic, one-state solution, in which Jews, Muslims and Christians can live side by side as equals — one person, one vote — or Bennett and Dayan’s ‘status quo’ vision, in which nearly four million Palestinians continue to live under a de facto Israeli military dictatorship, denied the right to vote and offered only a divided, bantustan statelet.”

…read more
Source: The Algemeiner

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