The Two State Option Is Dead

[My letter published in Israel National News - 26 February 2010]

Oslo is dead. The Road Map and Annapolis are the only games in town that define the scope of the currently stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

America's commitment in a letter to Israel by President Bush dated 14 April 2004 remains the linchpin on which any future negotiations will proceed.

Since the Palestinian Authority refuses to accept Bush's conclusions one can confidently predict that the resumption of those negotiations will be a complete waste of time.

The Only Two State Solution

[My letter published in Y Net - 8 February 2010]

The only two state solution...

1.Jordan PLUS Arab populated areas of West Bank
2.Israel PLUS Jewish populated areas of the West Bank

All that is required to achieve this two state solution is to redraw the boundary between Israel and Jordan in direct face to face negotiations between these two countries.

Why is everyone running around like chooks with their heads chopped off when the solution is so simple?

Get a life Abdullah. You can achieve fame and glory with the stroke of a pen.

Blair Is All Hot Air

[My letter published in Ha'Aretz - 7 December 2007]

Tony Blair will be bitterly disappointed if he is expecting a Palestinian State to emerge in 2008.

Israel`s Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - in his speech at Annapolis stated that:

"The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel."

That letter is going to be a central pillar in Israel`s continued rejection of PLO demands that the PLO be given every single metre of the West Bank, that the 450000 Jews living there be uprooted and that millions of Arabs be allowed to go and live in Israel.

PLO Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, is too weak to abandon these demands - first made by Yasser Arafat in 1974 - which have been parroted and trotted out by the Arab League ever since.

Unless Abbas is prepared to concede the heavily populated Jewish areas of the West Bank to Israel and abandon the claimed Arab right of return to Israel, these negotiations will become bogged down in the quicksand that marked the frenetic negotiating sessions prior to Annapolis.

Despite the posturing and grandstanding at Annapolis, there will be no change in the cycle of nothingness that has existed since President Bush`s euphoric announcement of his " two state vision" in 2002.

Fruitless negotiations over the next twelve months will see the President`s vision consigned to the shelves of his Presidential Library as a testament to six years of wasted diplomacy.

Paralysis has set in and become institutionalised for the next 12 months as a result of Annapolis - and nothing the President or Tony Blair does or says will be capable of producing any discernible movement.

Gaza - Cranky Ban Ki Engages In Hanky-Panky

[Published January 2009]


The dust has settled temporarily in Gaza with at least one fact clearly established - a badly bloodied but unbowed or unrepentant Hamas still remains firmly entrenched in occupation and control of Gaza’s civilian population.

Its estimated terrorist army of 20,000 fighters pledged to bring about the destruction of Israel has only been reduced by 500 at the most - perhaps only by as few as 48 if you want to believe Hamas.

Whilst the Hamas arsenal of rockets and mortars may have been seriously depleted, the ingenuity and determination of its political leaders and backers virtually guarantees full re-supply within six months - no matter what steps are taken by the international community to try to stop the flow of weapons into Gaza.

Doubtless this success - and the hatred engendered by Israel’s invasion - will encourage others in Gaza to join the ranks of this army that fights in mufti from houses, shelters, hospitals, schools and mosques using the civilian population as human shields.

The price paid by Gazans in deaths, injuries, and property losses for Hamas continuing its rocket barrage of Israeli civilian populations after the end of a six months ceasefire in December has been catastrophic.

The temporary ceasefire now prevailing - and the conditions demanded by Hamas for its continued operation - make it highly likely that hostilities will be soon resumed again rather than permanently suspended.

Into this scene of chaos and at a conference on Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Gaza held at Sharm El Sheikh on January 18 rides the United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon. His contribution at that conference is to tell those assembled:

“As the Secretary-General for the United Nations I have a broad responsibility to take care of all humanitarian sufferings by the people in Gaza. I am going to dispatch early this week a humanitarian needs assessment team to Gaza, organized and led by the United Nations and together with the World Bank and other donor organizations, Within ten days I think we will be able to make an assessment report and we will issue an urgent humanitarian flash appeal, and within three weeks, we will be able to present an assessment report on early recovery and essential repairs. I urge and certainly hope that the major donor countries will generously contribute to this appeal.”

Why would the Secretary-General not be urging the conference attendees to consider offering Gazans permanent resettlement - or at least evacuation - until the political situation in Gaza is finally determined?

It makes no sense to pour billions of dollars into the reconstruction of Gaza and the attempted rehabilitation of its traumatized citizens in situ with the more than likely possibility that the money spent will once again disappear down the tunnels still left untouched by Israel’s bombs or into the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt officials as has occurred so often in the past.

Gaza is a hell hole - and has been so for the last 60 years - whether occupied by Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. Its surviving residents have been subjected to inordinate suffering whilst political solutions have been vainly pursued during that time.

The population of Gaza is 1.5 million of whom 750000 are children. Offering them the chance of going to a safer haven permanently - or even temporarily - until an acceptable political solution is found seems to be a far better use of the billions of dollars that will be thrown to the wind in keeping the Gazans confined to Gaza and Hamas in control whilst that political solution is worked out.

The Secretary-General’s escape into fantasyland in believing a political solution could be soon achieved was revealed when he then declared:

” …we urgently need to bring back this Middle East peace process on track. We have already experienced sufferings and tragedies in 2006 in Lebanon, the situation in Gaza has been a repetition of the failure of this peace process, this is a failure of political will, at the level of people and at the level of leadership, all international community, particularly the Arab countries, should fully support and encourage this peace process on track. As a member of the Quartet, I will fully participate in trying to help the Middle East peace process,”

The United Nations has been a sponsor of the Middle East process - the Roadmap - for the last 6 years. It has gone nowhere and is dead as a dodo.

Neither the Roadmap - nor the Arab Peace Initiative first proposed in 2002 - have any chance of succeeding whilst the Arab demands for their successful conclusion require Israel to cede every square metre of the West Bank and Gaza and allow millions of Arabs the right to emigrate to Israel.

In the meantime the Secretary-General has no better idea for ending the suffering of Gazans than letting them continue to live in Gaza to continue enduring the tribulations that have plagued them since 1948.

On the 6th January 2009 Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, said in an interview in the Italian online newspaper Il Sussidiario.net.:

“Defenceless populations are always the ones who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp,”

When the Allies encountered the remnants of European Jewry in the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War 2 they opened the gates and set them free. Surely the Secretary-General cannot be so heartless as to deny Gazans the same opportunity to leave if they wish to do so.

The international outcry at the humanitarian crisis in Gaza should ensure that a large number of countries would be prepared to offer themselves as a permanent or temporary haven for Gazans.

The money outlaid in rehousing and rehabilitating the new arrivals in those host countries would be infinitely more better spent than being poured into Gaza and would make the provision of assistance to those refusing to move much easier to implement.

Hamas might seek to restrain the evacuation of the population preferring to hold them as hostages in pursuit of their fanatical drive to eliminate the State of Israel. The United Nations should not be deterred in ensuring Hamas is not allowed to prevail and frustrate this vital humanitarian objective.

The Secretary-General needs to act with firmness and authority. More of the same is simply not good enough.

Palestine - Bye Bye Bush, Onwards Obama

[Published January 2009]


President Bush’s Roadmap has been unceremoniously dumped at the Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing nominating Senator Hillary Clinton to be America’s next Secretary for State.

Amazingly not one mention was specifically made by Ms Clinton of the Roadmap or its VIP quartet of sponsors - America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - in the 63 pages of the transcript of the proceedings published 13 January 2009.

Indeed not one of the Senators present even asked a question relating to the future of the Roadmap.

The closest Ms Clinton got to almost mentioning the Roadmap was this curious statement made by her in response to a question by Senator Kerry:

“Well, you know, we are at a point where the current administration is working very hard behind the scenes and in front of the scenes and we don’t want to say or do anything that might interrupt or undermine what they are doing.”

With just 6 days to run before the current administration was ended, it was hardly a ringing endorsement of the Roadmap or really offered any expectation that the Roadmap would be at the forefront of the new administration’s efforts to solve the 130 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs to the territory once called Palestine.

Rather Ms Clinton gave this insight into what to expect under President Obama:

“As intractable as the Middle East problems may seem—and many presidents, including my husband, have spent years trying to work out a resolution—we cannot give up on peace. The president-elect and I understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel’s desire to defend itself under the current conditions and to be free of shelling by Hamas rockets.

However, we have also been reminded of the tragic humanitarian cost of conflict in the Middle East and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians. This must only increase our determination to seek a just and lasting peace agreement that brings real security to Israel; normal and positive relations with its neighbors; independence, economic progress, and security to the Palestinians in their own states.

We will exert every effort to support the work of Israelis and Palestinians who seek that result. It is critical not only to the parties involved, but to undermining the forces of alienation and violent extremism around the world.”

Ms Clinton pointedly did not say these objectives would be created through the continued pursuit of the Roadmap.

The Roadmap had been virtually declared a historical document in the long list of failed attempts to find a solution to the conflict when the Arabs rejected the following two conditions that President Bush had considered they would have to accept if there was to be a successful conclusion to any arrangement negotiated under the Roadmap:

1. That the entire area of the West Bank would not form part of a new Arab State to be created in the West Bank and Gaza

2. That the Arabs (and their descendants) made homeless in the 1948 War between Israel and the six Arab armies that invaded Western Palestine would not be allowed to return to the homes they had left - the so called “right of return”.

Whilst the first condition could be ultimately accepted by the Arabs, the right of return has been firmly ingrained in the Arab psyche in both the PLO Charter and the Hamas Covenant. Any Arab leadership recanting on this demand would be swept aside by the radical forces that urge its retention.

Ms Clinton however seems to feel this demand can be abandoned by adopting a more comprehensive strategy and by the payment of compensation as she told the Foreign Relations Committee:

“But we have refugee populations, some of decades longstanding and some of a few days standing, in so many places. I will do my very best to elevate this issue, to give you the kind of expertise within the State Department that will give you comfort that we’re going to make this a high priority, and to come up with solutions to some of our longstanding refugee challenges.

This is a very complex issue, because everywhere we look in the world, conflict, famine, disease, the economy, we have refugees. And so our hope is that we can get a more comprehensive strategy to deal with refugees, come to the Congress to get the funding for refugees, a problem which is compounded by the point that Senator Lugar made at the beginning of the hearing about the food crisis.

So I would welcome working with you and those who are concerned, as you are, to come up with an effective strategy for the United States to deploy with respect to refugees.”

Hot air and waffle have characterised the well intended - but fatally flawed - efforts of the Bush administration to bring peace between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.

It seems at this early stage that the Obama administration is in a policy void following the demise of the Roadmap. Ms Clinton has offered no positive proposals for ending the conflict at the Senate confirmation hearing. That indeed may be a positive for the new administration.

Ms Clinton may have learnt from her husband’s failure to bring peace to the Middle East and understand that managing - not necessarily resolving - the conflict remains the real key to any future American involvement at this particular time and for the foreseeable future.

Policies should be promoted that enable the current tensions in Gaza to be ameliorated and that separate the warring combatants in the West Bank so as to permit more conducive conditions to be created to enable a final settlement to be negotiated after the dust of conflict of the last 60 years - and in particular of the last three weeks - has first been given time to settle.

This will take time and patience. There is no quick fix to ending the suffering sustained by both Jews and Arabs and a lengthy passage of time and absence of non-violence and confrontation is needed to create the opportunities - and environment - to then end the conflict.

As he readies himself to take the oath of office President-elect Obama should carry with him the sage advice proffered in the ancient Jewish text - the Ethics Of The Fathers:

“The work is great - the day is short. It is not our duty to complete the work - but neither are we free to desist from it.”

Egypt and Jordan - Lifelines to Gaza and West Bank

[Published January 2009]


The growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza is slowly leading to the realization that removal of Hamas and its 20000 terrorist army from there has become a fundamental priority in permanently ending the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population.

This understanding has been complemented by the acknowledgment that the Palestinian Authority has been reduced to the status of a political eunuch following

1. its failure to achieve any breakthrough in 15 years of fruitless negotiations with Israel and
2. the embarrassing loss of its political and administrative control over Gaza to Hamas in the bitter confrontation played out between them in 2006 and 2007.

These views are reflected in articles appearing in the Washington Post on 5 January 2009 –“The Three State Option” – written by John Bolton former US ambassador to the United Nations and in the Jerusalem Post on 6 January 2009 – “The Solution to the ‘Palestinian Problem’” – written by respected international analyst Daniel Pipes.

Messrs Bolton and Pipes have both advocated a Jordanian – Egyptian rescue package as the solution to end the chaos and mayhem in Gaza and avoid the threatened crisis that will inevitably occur in the West Bank as President Bush’s Roadmap is finally determined to have run out of roads to traverse.

Both Bolton and Pipes recommend that Jordan return to control the West Bank and Egypt do likewise in Gaza -replicating the position that had existed from 1948 until 1967 when both territories were lost to Israel in the Six Days War in June 1967.

Despite continuing rosy and optimistic assessments claiming an imminent breakthrough in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the parties still remain poles apart in their negotiating positions.

The Palestinian Authority continues to insist on the following two demands being accepted by Israel

1. The removal of all 500000 Jews now living in the West Bank and
2. The return to Israel of millions of Arabs (and their descendants) made homeless by the 1948 Arab-Israel War.

Israel has clearly indicated its outright rejection of these two demands and the last twelve months of intensive and exhaustive negotiations have failed to make any real dent in the negotiating positions of either side.

The Arab Peace initiative 2002 has now been touted as the saviour of these negotiations but it fails to offer any answers to resolving these two deal-breaking demands. Indeed it virtually imposes their acceptance as essential to the success of the Initiative. It is presented by the Arab League on a “take it all or leave it basis” and accordingly will be left at the starting gate by Israel.

In essence then the so called solution to the “Palestinian problem” – the creation of a new Arab State in the West Bank and Gaza – has become insoluble because the Arab conditions for its creation are unattainable in any negotiating process.

The international community has posited many solutions for the last 90 years to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs to the territory once called “Palestine” - all of which have been refused by the Arabs resulting in continued and ongoing death, injury, trauma, suffering and misery for both Jews and Arabs.

This situation has not been helped by the failure of the 21 Arab League member states – with the notable exception of Jordan - to resettle and offer permanent citizenship to those Arabs who fled the fighting in 1948 between the fledgling state of Israel and six invading Arab armies. It has also not been helped by the refusal of these member states - other than Egypt and Jordan - to recognise Israel, to enter into peace treaties with Israel and to grant each other full diplomatic representation.

Therefore the re-entry of Jordan and Egypt into the West Bank and Gaza respectively remains the most realistic option available to manage and contain - if not finally resolve - the current conflict.

Successful conclusion of negotiations between Israel, Jordan and Egypt (possibly under United Nations Chairmanship) could

1. Offer the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza - presently stateless - Jordanian or Egyptian citizenship
2. End the current humanitarian crisis in both Gaza and the West Bank
3. Allow every Arab or Jewish resident of the West Bank to continue living in his current home
4. End any actual – or perceived - Israeli control or restrictions over Gazan and West Bank Arabs
5. Finally resolve sovereignty in the 6% of Palestine that still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs since the Mandate for Palestine was promulgated by the League of Nations in 1922.
6. Set up an International Tribunal to compensate Arabs affected by the 1948 War and Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries in the wake of its aftermath

Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been given enough time to achieve some positive advance towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict. They have both proved themselves unequal to the task.

The call by Bolton and Pipes for their replacement by Jordan and Egypt as Israel’s negotiating partners needs to be urgently embraced – and demanded - by the international community.

Refusal by Israel, Egypt and Jordan to sit down and attempt to negotiate the future of the West Bank and Gaza - with the backing of promised financial aid, military and diplomatic assistance from the international community - will herald an end to any peaceful efforts to settle the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

The international community cannot let this happen due to the objection of one or more of these parties.

It should make clear that to do so will result in all further military and financial assistance to the refusing parties being withheld. It should also make clear that it will turn its attention away from resolving “the Palestinian problem” to resolving other conflicts around the world where its prestige, financial clout and influence will be more appreciated and likely to yield positive results.

President elect Obama will be searching for a way out of the current impasse caused by the failure of the Roadmap negotiations and the current invasion of Gaza by Israel. No doubt he will be made fully aware of the views of John Bolton and Daniel Pipes. Hopefully he sees the merits of their proposals and adopts them.

This way forward could also be President Obama’s lifeline – not only that of the Gazan and West Bank Arabs.

Gaza - Oust Hamas Or Surrender To Terror

[Published January 2009]


Concern for Gaza’s civilian population has engendered a wave of demonstrations around the world over the past few days as Israel’s army enters Gaza to try and effectively end the incessant barrage of rockets and mortars that have been fired indiscriminately into Israel’s population centres by Hamas for the last eight years.

Significantly missing from those demonstrations were any signs demanding “Hamas Out”.

There were plenty of banners saying “Free Palestine” but not one saying “Free Gaza”, “Hamas End Occupation” or “Hamas Handover To Abbas”.

Even Israel has stated its current incursion into Gaza is not designed to bring about regime change. One would hope the attainment of this objective has not really been foregone but remains the ultimate- but as yet unexpressed - goal to be achieved.

Mahmoud Abbas and every spokesman for the Palestinian Authority - thrown out of Gaza by Hamas eighteen months ago and locked in a bitter internecine struggle with Hamas for political control of Gaza ever since then - have not called on Hamas to leave Gaza to end the suffering of Gaza’s population.

No world leader has taken the frequent opportunities afforded by CNN, Fox or the BBC to call for Hamas to be removed from Gaza.

Indeed there has not been one demonstration by Gaza’s civilian population calling on Hamas to end its rocket and mortar attacks on Israel to end the insufferable horrors that are now occurring in Gaza.

Hamas has entrenched its armed forces and its rocket and mortar stocks in civilian population centres. Hamas knows full well the inevitability of heavy Gazan civilian casualties being sustained as Israel seeks to root out and destroy Hamas fighters located there - virtually ensuring the intensity of these world-wide demonstrations increasing as those Gazan civilian casualties continue to climb.

All demonstrations and current calls from world leaders instead only demand an immediate cease fire – not the ouster of Hamas from Gaza.

If such a cease fire is ever achieved Hamas would still be the dominant power in Gaza. What has been happening for the last ten days would then only become round one in a contest between Israel and Hamas guaranteed to be renewed with definite certainty and even greater ferocity at some time in the future.

Amazingly too the concern of the world community with the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population has not included a demand that the Rafah crossing – controlled by Egypt – be opened to allow at least Gaza’s women and children to be evacuated whilst the conflict continues. The Arab League has been shamefully silent in making any such demand obviously preferring to keep Gazans penned in as virtual hostages and human shields to become potential casualties in an effort to discredit Israel’s attempts to end the Hamas campaign against Israel.

Everyone seems to have also forgotten that Hamas has been declared a prescribed terrorist organization by America, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Australia. Hamas has been declared as an illegitimate usurper of power in Gaza by the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas has stymied any efforts to create a 22nd Arab State in Gaza and the West Bank – a political settlement which has no possible chance of happening whilst Hamas controls Gaza and admittedly very little chance of eventuating even if Hamas is ousted from power.

The only satisfactory outcome to Israel’s incursion into Gaza can be the removal of Hamas from Gaza. Anything less will signal an enormous victory for terrorist groups world -wide who will be able to count on hiding behind civilians to ensure that heavy civilian casualties will be the breaking point on which attempts to eliminate the terrorists will ultimately founder.

All terrorist groups must be heartened by the current world-wide demonstrations that focus on Gaza’s undoubted humanitarian crisis and completely ignore the root cause of Gaza’s problem today – the decisions made by Hamas that have brought the territory and its citizens to the disastrous position that they now face.

Israel is doing the world’s dirty work in combating the ugly face of terrorism as it is so ruthlessly exploited in Gaza. There are no NATO forces or troops from other countries supporting Israel’s attempt to silence the Hamas barrage.

Israel has had to take up the gauntlet once again in fighting terrorism as it did when faced with very similar circumstances involving the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon in 1982. At the conclusion of Israel’s then campaign Yasser Arafat and 14000 armed PLO fighters were exiled to Tunisia following mediation by US Ambassador – Philip Habib.

The cancer that had affected both the civilian populations of Israel and Lebanon had been removed.

A Multinational Force was authorized to facilitate the process and to provide protection for Palestinian civilians left in Lebanon. On August 21, 1982 French troops arrived and on August 24 the US Marines went ashore in Beirut. The PLO evacuation was completed without significant incident and the Marines withdrew to their ships on September 10.

A similar outcome is possible - and is essential - if Gazans are to be freed from the conflict and instability that has dogged them since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas ejected the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007.

To enable this to happen Hamas must be militarily ground down to the point where it is in danger of complete extinction unless it retires to lick its wounds and reconsider its options if it wishes to be taken seriously as having any political standing in resolving the Arab - Jewish conflict over the territory once called Palestine.

As diplomatic efforts now step into top gear the consequences of leaving Hamas in control in Gaza need to be fully understood.

Israel must be given the opportunity to militarily end the Hamas reign of terror in Gaza.

Failure to facilitate allowing this to occur will most certainly be a recipe for further conflict and even greater suffering by a civilian population which has paid an inordinately high price for electing Hamas to a position where it was able to lead the civilian population down the road to despair that faces it today.

Continuing terror or the prospect of peace are the options facing the world as they grapple diplomatically in trying to end the war on terrorism in Gaza.

Hopefully they make the right choice.