No politics, no diplomacy, military rules OK

The flawed premises: two decades of failed state-making

Posted By Alastair Crooke, Foreign Policy, April 28 2011

Europe and America have shared a settled conviction over the last decades: It is that Israel, out of its own necessity, must seek to conserve a Jewish majority within Israel. And that with time, and a growing Palestinian population, Israel will at some point have to acquiesce to a Palestinian state in order to maintain that Jewish majority: that is, only by giving Palestinians their own state and thereby shedding a part of the Palestinians it controls, can Israel’s Jewish majority be preserved.
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But perhaps both the original “Israel surely wants a Palestinian state” premise, and the linked premise that building security trust with Israel is the necessary sine qua non to Israel’s transition to the two state solution, are wrong. Perhaps Israel has had an alternative to the presumed inevitability of two states with equal political rights for all citizens. The evidence of Israeli actions on the ground plainly does not support the contention that Israel has been preparing the transition to a two-state solution of fixed borders, and a sovereign Palestinian state. On the contrary, the evidence points in the opposite direction: That it has been intent on frustrating the two-state solution within fixed borders.
For the remainder of this Foreign Policy article go to http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/04/27/the_flawed_premises_two_decades_failed_state_making