RAMALLAH, Jan. 10 (JMCC) - An imposed solution in the Middle East simply means getting both sides to live up to committments that they have each made in signed agreements, points out scholar Henry Siegman in The Nation magazine.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's conditions for Palestinian statehood would leave under Israel's control Palestine's international borders and airspace, as well as the entire Jordan Valley; would leave most of the settlers in place; and would fragment the contiguity of the territory remaining for such a state. His conditions would also deny Palestinians even those parts of East Jerusalem that Israel unilaterally annexed to the city immediately following the 1967 war--land that had never been part of Jerusalem before the war. In other words, Netanyahu's conditions for Palestinian statehood would meet Dayan's goal of leaving Israel's de facto occupation in place.

From Dayan's prescription for the permanence of the status quo to Netanyahu's prescription for a two-state solution, Israel has lived without a solution, not because of uncertainty or neglect but as a matter of deliberate policy, clandestinely driving settlement expansion to the point of irreversibility while pretending to search for a Palestinian partner for peace.

Sooner or later the White House, Congress and the American public--not to speak of a Jewish establishment that is largely out of touch with the younger Jewish generation's changing perceptions of Israel's behavior--will have to face the fact that America's special relationship with Israel is sustaining a colonial enterprise.

Read more at The Nation...