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NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 15 JULY 2009

PALESTINE: THE PROSPECTS FOR A TWO STATE SOLUTION

This month's Special Report goes to the heart of the world's greatest political problem, of how to co-exist with militant Islam. It is unwelcome news to many that inescapably a key element in re-ordering world affairs is the half-century long Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Israel achieved statehood through the eventual adoption by the United Nations of a resolution proclaiming the validity of this new state, and resolving the territorial problem by also creating a Palestinian state as its neighbour. Israel has been exceptionally successful, admirable in many ways, including maintaining a western style democracy in a middle-eastern sea of military, monarchistic, or just plain thuggish authoritarian regimes. But with amazing myopia they have not only differentiated between their Arab-Israeli citizens and the rest, in terms of rights, but much more seriously have allowed the territory of Palestine, which they rule as a result of their stunning military victories of 1967, to become a sink of iniquity and a well of hopelessness.

There's none so blind as those who don't wish to see: It was obvious that resentment and shame lie near to the heart of Islamic terrorism and no single event in 20th century has more influenced the motivation of the misguided 'bomb-fodder' that the terror-masters recruit, than the plight of the Palestinians, a fate inexorably associated by them with the United States and its cohorts, in which they include the existing heads of many Arab states. Why the US? Because that great nation is the patron and guarantor of the tiny state of Israel. US politicians are collectively and individually subject to the massive influence of the Israeli lobby – a political lobbying machine of brilliant conception and performance, now ingrained in the US body-politic.

The report we offer this month, Palestine: The Prospects for a Two State Solution is by Alessandro Bruno, a knowledgeable specialist in middle eastern affairs and a regular contributor to New Nations. His key conclusion is that nothing will change until the US President grasps the nettle.

The two state solution is a policy endorsed by the July meeting of the G8. Bruno analyses what progress can be seen, since the advent of a new US president with a fresh approach, to the many problems involved in creating a nation state from the patchwork of Arab populated territories. In defiance of UN resolutions, Palestine has been systematically colonised, with numerous Israeli settlements - 300,000 settlers with a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem, an independent Palestine's designated capital.

It would be foolish to think that a fair settlement of the Palestinian problem alone would mean the end of the Islamic terror, but it would be even more foolish to believe that there could be any end in sight, without a just and generally acceptable solution.

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Palestine: The Two State Solution