Illegitimacy? FT says that Netanyahu is committed to ‘national suicide’

Even the Financial Times is saying it, two-state-solution is over. Notice the litany here, colonies, national suicide. A friend who passed this along says that Jimmy Carter wrote very much this prediction in the Washington Post a few months back. And he is PNG in Washington. Wow.

Mr Abbas’s position has been steadily eroded over time because he has absolutely nothing to show for his years of pursuing a peace strategy based on a negotiated settlement – except for expanded Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

If a figure such as Mr Abbas cannot survive in the present climate, then he is likely to be replaced by a far more radical and uncompromising leadership. No Palestinian leader can or will negotiate while Israeli colonisation of the West Bank continues. Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to call a halt to expanding settlements means in effect there will be no two-state solution.

If that is so, then the prospect is for a long and bitter fight for equal rights within one state. That would spell the end of Israel as a democratic Jewish state. It would come to resemble in many ways the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. If Mr Netanyahu believes that he has achieved a victory by refusing to halt the settlements, he is wrong. It is more like a project of national suicide.