(The Guardian) Killing a two-state solution

<snip>

"We do not know how many civilians died in the assault which Israel launched on Hamas in Gaza at 11.30am on Saturday, because Israel prevents foreign journalists as well as Israeli ones from entering the strip. But we do know that the air raids brought the biggest total loss of life on a single day in Gaza in 40 years: more than 230 Palestinians. The death toll by last night had climbed to nearly 290, with more than 700 wounded. This in reply to hundreds of rockets from Hamas militants which killed one Israeli in six months. But the equation is always like this.

We also know that to have chosen to strike on a Saturday morning, when the streets of this impoverished enclave were full, showed the same indifference to human life that Israel charges its enemies with. When the suicide bombers reply in cafes and shops, as they inevitably will, Israel will reel in horror. But it will shut out of its mind the blood its warplanes have caused to flow in Gaza this weekend. The foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, warned loudly of her government's intention to topple Hamas if it did not stop the rocket fire. But both she and the defence minister, Ehud Barak, are responsible for dropping over 100 tonnes of explosives on up to 100 targets in a strip of land crowded with 1.5 million people. A hammer blow is intended to terrorise and that is exactly what Israel did yesterday. Dr Haidar Eid, a Gazan academic who saw the bodies and children with amputated limbs, told Haaretz journalist Amira Hass: "To pick a time like this, 11:30 , to bomb in the hearts of cities, this is terrible. This choice was intended to cause as large a massacre as possible." The targets were not the training camps of Hamas's military wing, which were empty when the jets struck, but rather police stations. The raids were intended to destroy the infrastructure on which Hamas builds its administrative as much as its military hold over Gaza. But that means killing policemen, not just the militants who assemble and fire the rockets. Presumably it also means targeting judges, officials, and doctors too.

Ms Livni has been Israel's lead negotiator with the Palestinian authority in the West Bank and she has invested more political capital than most in the goal of creating a Palestinian state. If she thinks she is clearing the way for a moderate Palestinian state by trying physically to eliminate the leadership of one half of the population, she is sorely mistaken. There has been no diminution of support for Hamas in Gaza, as a result of Israel's policy of blockading it, and support for Hamas may well rise as a result of these airstrikes. The Palestinians have always had a rejectionist wing, which for so long was represented by Fatah. Israel, too, has those who reject a Palestinian state, including many settlers. To think a solution can be found by killing rejectionists is to deny the entire course of the history of the Middle East. There is no military solution to Hamas's rockets, which continued to rain down on Israel yesterday. Nor is a ground invasion is likely to stop the rockets. It could displace them, perhaps. But if that happened, Hamas's next tactic could be to use the Palestinians of East Jerusalem to wield the launch tubes.

Hamas's leadership also now has the conditions for which it has strived. They boycotted the talks offered by Egypt in November, built a tunnel through which they intended to attack an Israeli border post, and fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. Their tactic and their strategy is no more and no less than resistance. But this will not unite the Palestinians or buy Hamas a place in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. It can only deepen the crisis within the Palestinian leadership, for the truth is that no Palestinian faction can now lead alone. While splits deepen, the prospect of a viable Palestinian state recedes. Shock and awe, Israeli-style, have done nothing more than paralyse the very processes which both Israelis and Palestinians need in order to survive in peace."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israel-palestine

And the claim always seem to be coming from the Palestinian camp, so I am starting to wonder, why is it exactly that they keep trying to pronounce the two state solution dead?

(of course, aside from the regular massacres and other various war crimes)

I believe the two state solution is very much alive, it is just that it's death would serve the political purpose of a few... (Namely trying to fuse israel with arab majority areas to produce a arab majority in the jewish state and then promptly trying to disband it)

What should be done with the native population?

the Israeli leadership chief among them. Land-thieving settlers would also rejoice.

Outside of the recently broked truce, which hamas decided not to extend in favor of launching rockets at israel.

They want War to the End.

How Godly.

If they would just stop saying what they perceive to be the clear truth, everything would be just fine.

And if all those people would just stop dying in bomb blasts, the level of violence wouldn't be so high.

Peace doesnt put much money in their bank accounts, so why would either side want peace?

I guess Israel's answer is to just massacre them whenever they don't go along with the colonization efforts quietly

Stealing native Palestinian land??? Such emotional rhetoric! Going a bit over the top aren't we? A little teeny tiny reminder... Israel withdrew from the entire Gaza strip in 2005. That's three and a half years ago. And all she got in exchange was... gunfire, Mortars, Kassams. Way to go Hamas in encouraging a peaceful settlement. That's sure to encourage Israel to withdraw from other settlements. :sarcasm:

in preventing a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Ariel Sharon promised Hamas that they could successfully block any peace talks simply by keeping up attacks, and subsequent Israeli governments (as most prior ones) have hewed to that approach. This is merely the latest, though more vigorous, step in the dance of death Israel and Hamas have performed with one another.

We have at least one visitor here that understands the situation.

Hamas and Israeli leadership are brothers in war, each of them terrorist thugs who thrive on hatred, vengeance and bloodthirst.

It all comes down to land. Israel stole the land from the native Palestinians, and wants to steal more. Hamas is obviously opposed to that theft. And so the two continue to courageously bomb away at the innocent victims on either side.

Of course, the big difference between the two -- U.S. support for one and not the other.

the Palestinians would realize that they lost the best chance for a state they ever got.

They will never got the land they were offered again.

They are not the only people who have lost land in war or partition.

They are not the only people currently living under occupation.

However, the Palestinians had a chance to make a real state in Gaza, their own little Singapore.

Instead, they turned it into a miserable hellhole, with the only goal and main economy being terrorism,

Pity the innocents, who did not support Hamas, do not support terrorism, and want to live in peace.

Interesting.

I actually think the only possibility is three states, since there is no unity whatsoever among the Palestinian factions.

Consider the original division of India and the two state solution there. After a while it became a three state solution. Given the divisions between the west bank and Gaza, it may be better off to start with three and they can merge later if they choose to.