Roadmap to HELL - One man caught on a barbed wire fence ....

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by Moonlit_Angel

it just seems odd that people would be willing to risk living there. That's all. It'd be odd for any religious group to plant roots there, because that area seems to be ground zero for a lot of the fights going on, the kind A_Wanderer alluded to. But if Israelis want to live there, fine. Arabs want to live there, fine. Christians want to live there, fine. Just odd that any one of them would choose to stay in a place where there's a strong chance of war and fighting.
Angela

But I pointed out that the area was relatively peaceful for hundreds of years. The violence did not start until AFTER the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, there was a very small population in the area when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, only 700,000 compared to the 12 million that live there today. As for not leaving the area after the violence started, thats not odd, since it is their home.

[Irvine511]

does this sound like progress?

Israel easing blockade of Gaza 'except for military items'
By the CNN Wire Staff


Jerusalem (CNN) -- Israel plans to ease its blockade of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday following an Israeli Security Cabinet meeting, a step commended by major powers and brushed off by a Palestinian organization and government.

"The government position is that Israel should open all the crossings of Gaza in accordance with 2005 AMA agreement, and end the closure regime," Palestinian government spokesman Ghassan Khatib told CNN.

Tony Blair, envoy for the Middle East Quartet -- the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- said in a statement Israel would publish a list of weapons and war items not permitted into Gaza rather than those permitted, and allow full access of civilian goods.

The Security Cabinet said last week it planned to revamp its policy, paving the way for a vote Sunday.

"This comes as a partial manner due to international pressure but does not meet the minimal needs of the people in Gaza to live in dignity," said Hanan Ashrawi, member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee.

Ashraw said the steps were an improvement but the blockade should be completely lifted and the Israeli occupation ended.

Israel's announcement comes three weeks after ships in Israel's naval blockade sparred with a flotilla of aid ships heading to Gaza. Nine Turkish activists were killed in the incident, which drew international criticism.

Israel's military stopped the flotilla and boarded the ships. Israel says its troops were attacked with knives, metal poles and other objects on one of the boats, and the flotilla passengers say they were fired upon without provocation.

The latest step is among six the Israeli government will begin implementing as soon as possible, including expanding operations at the existing operating land crossings and streamlining the permitting process of international aid groups the government recognizes, the prime minister said.

The naval blockade of Gaza remains in place, and military officials will continue to inspect goods on Gaza-bound ships, Netanyahu said. "Israel will continue to facilitate the expeditious inspection and delivery of goods bound for Gaza through the port of Ashdod."

Blair, who met with Netanyahu on Sunday, said the move should radically change the exchange of goods in the area.

"Plainly there are still issues to be addressed and the test of course will be not what is said, but what is done," Blair said in a statement. "But I welcome strongly this statement of policy and the Office of the Quartet Representative looks forward to working closely with the Government of Israel and other partners on its implementation."

The White House also commended the policy, saying in a statement it will improve conditions for Palestinians in Gaza while preventing the entry of weapons.

"We will work with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet and other international partners to ensure these arrangements are implemented as quickly and effectively as possible and to explore additional ways to improve the situation in Gaza, including greater freedom of movement and commerce between Gaza and the West Bank," the statement said. "There is more to be done, and the president looks forward to discussing this new policy, and additional steps, with Prime Minister Netanyahu during his visit to Washington on July 6."

"Over these coming months we therefore need: to improve life in Gaza; continue the growth in the West Bank and the PA development of its institutions for statehood; and ensure that the indirect talks, led by Senator Mitchell, turn into full direct negotiations," Blair said.

The White House said, "there is no need for unnecessary confrontations, and we call on all parties to act responsibly in meeting the needs of the people of Gaza."

Israel, the United States and Blair all called for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who has been held in Gaza for nearly four years. "We will redouble our efforts to secure his freedom," Blair said.

Separately, Germany criticized Israeli officials for denying Dirk Niebel, German minister of economic cooperation and development, entry into Gaza.

"The goal of the federal government remains the complete end of the blockade Gaza Strip," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a Sunday statement. "That is not only Germany's stance but also that of our partners in the European Union."

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said Neibel was not allowed to enter Gaza because "Hamas uses visits of this kind for purposes of manipulation and misrepresentation of international legitimacy and normal relations with the international community."

Israel's policy of denying high-ranking diplomats access to Gaza -- in place since last year's Israeli incursion into Gaza -- has angered European governments which finance various programs in Gaza. Israel made an exception earlier this year, when it allowed United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Baroness Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, to visit Gaza.

Israel easing blockade of Gaza 'except for military items' - CNN.com

i guess this is what happens when you implement a common sense policy with Israel.

[deep]

If anyone gives anything to Palestinian charities, they are accused and charged with aiding terror


and then we have this

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/wo...e.html?_r=1&hp

[A_Wanderer]

There are more than a million registered charities, and many submit sparse or misleading mission summaries in tax filings. Religious groups have no obligation to divulge their finances, meaning settlements may be receiving sums that cannot be traced.

Don't question the tax exemption. It's for religious purposes. This will bring Jesus back when things heat up

[the iron horse]

The Myth Of The Palestinian People - Op-Eds - Israel National News

[A_Wanderer]

Isn't it great that you repost racist articles by colonialists. I think that you're going to be my new barometer for conservative Christians.

[the iron horse]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

Isn't it great that you repost racist articles by colonialists. I think that you're going to be my new barometer for conservative Christians.

Please post what you disagree with about the article.

[A_Wanderer]

Only one question never seems to be addressed: Who are the Jews? Who are these people who claim the Holy Land as their own? What is their history? Where did they come from? How did they arrive in the country they call Israel? Now that both US President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (in direct opposition to the platform he was elected on) have come out in favor of a
?Jews doubt Blair can deliver,? announces the BBC. ?Four Jews die in West Bank,? reports CNN. ?IDF demolishes building used by Jew gunmen,? announces Israel?s government run Channel 1 News. The modern media is filled with stories about the Jews, their plight, their dilemmas and their struggles. All aspects of their lives seem to have been put under the microscope. Only one question never seems to be addressed: Who are the Jews? Who are these people who claim the Holy Land as their own? What is their history? Where did they come from? How did they arrive in the country they call Israel? Now that both US President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (in direct opposition to the platform he was elected on) have come out in favor of a Jew state, it would be prudent to seek answers to these questions. For all we know, Israel could be as real as Disneyland.

The general impression given in the media is that Jews have lived in the Holy Land for hundreds, if not thousands of years. No wonder, then, that a recent poll of French citizens shows that the majority believe (falsely) that prior to the establishment of the State of Israel an independent Arab Jew state existed in its place. Yet curiously, when it comes to giving the history of this ?ancient? people most news outlets find it harder to go back more than the early nineteen hundreds. CNN, an agency which has devoted countless hours of airtime to the ?plight? of the Jews, has a website which features a special section on the Middle East conflict called ?Struggle For Peace?. It includes a promising sounding section entitled ?Lands Through The Ages? which assures us it will detail the history of the region using maps. Strangely, it turns out, the maps displayed start no earlier than the ancient date of 1917. The CBS News website has a background section called ?A Struggle For Middle East Peace.?? Its history timeline starts no earlier than 1897. The NBC News background section called ??Searching for Peace?? has a timeline which starts in 1916. BBC?s timeline starts in 1948.

Yet, the clincher must certainly be the Jew National Authority?s own website. While it is top heavy on such phrases as ?Israeli occupation? and ?Israeli human rights violations? the site offers practically nothing on the history of the so-called Jew people. The only article on the site with any historical content is called ?Jew History - 20th Century Milestones? which seems only to confirm that prior to 1900 there was no such concept as the Jew People.

While the modern media maybe short on information about the history of the ?Jew people? the historical record is not. Books, such as Battleground by Samuel Katz and From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters long ago detailed the history of the region. Far from being settled by Jews for hundreds, if not thousands of years, the Land of Israel, according to dozens of visitors to the land, was, until the beginning of the last century, practically empty. Alphonse de Lamartine visited the land in 1835. In his book, Recollections of the East, he writes "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw no living object, heard no living sound?." None other than the famous American author Mark Twain, who visited the Land of Israel in 1867, confirms this. In his book Innocents Abroad he writes, ?A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely?. We never saw a human being on the whole journey.? Even the British Consul in Palestine reported, in 1857, ?The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population??

In fact, according to official Ottoman Turk census figures of 1882, in the entire Land of Israel, there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab. This number was to skyrocket to 650,000 Arabs by 1922, a 450% increase in only 40 years. By 1938 that number would become over 1 million or an 800% increase in only 56 years. Population growth was especially high in areas where Jews lived. Where did all these Arabs come from? According to the Arabs the huge increase in their numbers was due to natural childbirth. In 1944, for example, they alleged that the natural increase (births minus deaths) of Arabs in the Land of Israel was the astounding figure of 334 per 1000. That would make it roughly three times the corresponding rate for the same year of Lebanon and Syria and almost four times that of Egypt, considered amongst the highest in the world. Unlikely, to say the least. If the massive increase was not due to natural births, then were did all these Arabs come from?

All the evidence points to the neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. In 1922 the British Governor of the Sinai noted that ?illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria.? In 1930, the British Mandate -sponsored Hope-Simpson Report noted that ?unemployment lists are being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania? and ?illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material.? The Arabs themselves bare witness to this trend. For example, the governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey el Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Hauran had moved to the Land of Israel. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Land of Israel, noted in 1939 that ?far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied.?

Far from displacing the Arabs, as they claimed, the Jews were the very reason the Arabs chose to settle in the Land of Israel. Jobs provided by newly established Zionist industry and agriculture lured them there, just as Israeli construction and industry provides most Arabs in the Land of Israel with their main source of income today. Malcolm MacDonald, one of the principal authors of the British White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, admitted (conservatively) that were it not for a Jewish presence the Arab population would have been little more than half of what it actually was. Today, when due to the latest ?intifada? Arabs from the territories under 35 are no longer allowed into pre-1967 Israel to work, unemployment has skyrocketed to over 40% and most rely on European aid packages to survive.

Not only pre-state Arabs lied about being indigenous. Even today, many prominent so-called Jews, it turns out, are foreign born. Edward Said, an Ivy League Professor of Literature and a major Jew propagandist, long claimed to have been raised in Jerusalem. However, in an article in the September 1999 issue of Commentary Magazine Justus Reid Weiner revealed that Said actually grew up in Cairo, Egypt, a fact which Said himself was later forced to admit. But why bother with Said? Ariel Sharon himself, self declared ?leader of the Jewish people?, has always claimed to have been born and raised in ?Israel?. In fact, according to his official biographer Richard Hart, as well as the BBC, Arafat was born in Cairo on August 24, 1929 and that?s where he grew up.

To maintain the charade of being an indigenous population, Arab propagandists have had to do more than a little rewriting of history. A major part of this rewriting involves the renaming of geography. For two thousand years the central mountainous region of Israel was known as Judea and Samaria, as any medieval map of the area testifies. However, the state of Jordan occupied the area in 1948 and renamed it the West Bank. This is a funny name for a region that actually lies in the eastern portion of the land and can only be called ?West? in reference to Jordan. This does not seem to bother the majority of news outlets covering the region, which universally refer to the region by its recent Jordanian name.

The term ?Jew" is itself a masterful twisting of history. To portray themselves as indigenous, Arab settlers adopted the name of an ancient Canaanite tribe, the Phillistines, that died out almost 3000 years ago. The connection between this tribe and modern day Arabs is nil. Who is to know the difference? Given the absence of any historical record, one can understand why Yasser Arafat claims that Jesus Christ, a Jewish carpenter from the Galilee, was a Jew. Every year, at Christmas time, Arafat goes to Bethlehem and tells worshippers that Jesus was in fact ?the first Jew?.

If the Jews are indeed a myth, then the real question becomes ?Why?? Why invent a fictitious people? The answer is that the myth of the Jew People serves as the justification for Arab occupation of the Land of Israel. While the Arabs already possess 21 sovereign countries of their own (more than any other single people on earth) and control a land mass 800 times the size of the Land of Israel, this is apparently not enough for them. They therefore feel the need to rob the Jews of their one and only country, one of the smallest on the planet. Unfortunately, many people ignorant of the history of the region, including much of the world media, are only too willing to help.



It is interesting to note that the Bible makes reference to a fictitious nation confronting Israel. ?They have provoked me to jealously by worshipping a non-god, angered me with their vanities. I will provoke them with a non-nation; anger them with a foolish nation (Deuteronomy 32:21).?

On second thought, it may be unfair to compare Israel to Disneyland. After all, Disneyland really exists.

It's a simple and haphazard modification but some of the statements sound quite evil.

As anitram said people would rightly label an article which denied the existence of Jews as bigoted so why shouldn't your article be held to the same standards?

[deep]

Israel is proving to the world it is run by a circus

Netanyahu invested a great deal of effort in trying to convince world leaders that he is serious about peace with the Palestinians.
And now comes Lieberman, and tells all those leaders that it's all crap.

Israel is proving to the world it is run by a circus - | Israel News

[anitram]

These "peace" talks are a gong show.

It is clear that Israel is satisfied with maintaining the status quo and it has no interest in negotiating in good faith. Land grab, baby, land grab! Great allocation of American taxpayer dollars.

I generally think that since the Clinton era the Palestinians bear most of the blame for failed peace talks, but this time Israel is the belligerent party, no question about it.

[yolland]

Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 15

The Obama administration is pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a 90-day freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank, suggesting that enough progress could be made over that time on land swaps and border-setting as to make moot the recurring stumbling block of settlements.

The deal represents a gamble for the Obama White House: In marathon talks last week between Mr. Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Obama administration agreed not to seek another settlement freeze once this one would end.

...In exchange for Israel accepting this last settlement freeze, the Obama administration is offering it some sweet carrots: a phalanx of new fighter jets, a US-Israel security pact, and a US commitment to thwart any Palestinian effort at the United Nations to do an end run around stalled negotiations. If Palestinian leaders were to ask the UN Security Council to grant pre-accord international recognition of a Palestinian state, for instance, the US would veto it.

Some Middle East analysts question why the US would expend so much of its leverage with Israel for such a short period of time--and with no guarantees of success. Administration officials answer that the deal could set direct talks between the two parties on a course unencumbered by what has been one of the darkest clouds hanging over them.

...But with the US offering so much seemingly just to keep the talks going, [CFR director Robert] Danin asks “whether we want this more than the two parties most directly involved.” The risk for the US, he adds, is that by committing so much at this stage, “we run the risk of debasing our own currency.”

Not sure whether this is monumental tactical naivete, a novel warning to Netanyahu that perks previously taken for granted are about to become conditional, or some of both.

[yolland]

From an interesting current interview with Noam Chomsky in the Jewish webzine Tabletmag (I've added brief translations/descriptions of a few of the Hebrew terms, in brackets):

... T: Was [your background in Hebrew] what motivated you to live in Israel?

NC: My wife and I were there in ’53. We lived in a kibbutz for a while and planned to stay, actually. I came back and had to finish my PhD. We thought we’d go back.

T: Was it the idea of the kibbutz, or was it the fact of speaking Hebrew, or what was it?

NC: It was political. I was interested in Hebrew, but that wasn’t the driving force. I liked the kibbutz life and the kibbutz ideals. It has pretty much disappeared now, I should say. But that time was incredible in spirit. For one thing it was a poor country. The kibbutz I went to, and I picked it for this reason, was actually originally Buberite [based on Martin Buber's Zionist philosophy, i.e. pacifist, socialist and binationalist]. It came from German refugees in the 1930s and had a kind of Buberite style. It was the center for Arab outreach activities in Mapam [a Zionist-socialist party, now subsumed into the small, leftist Meretz party]. There was plenty of racism, I should say. I lived with it. But mostly against Mizrahim [non-Ashkenazi Jews].

T: When you think of the motivations of people like your parents or the people who founded those Mapam kibbutzim, you don’t think of those motivations as being inherently linked to some desire to oppress others?

NC: By then I was old enough to separate from my parents. I’d been on my own intellectually since I was a teenager. I gravitated toward Zionist groups that were not in their milieu, like Hashomer Ha’tzair [a Zionist youth movement]...I could never join Hashomer, because in those days they were split between Stalinist and Trotskyite, and I was anti-Leninist. But I was in the neighborhood.

It was a Hashomer kibbutz that [my wife and I] went to, Kibbutz Hazore’a. It’s changed a lot. We would never have lasted. It was sort of a mixed story. They were binationalists. So up until 1948, they were anti-state. There were those who gravitated toward or who were involved in efforts of Arab-Jewish working-class cooperation, and who were for socialist binationalist Palestine. Those ideas sound exotic today, but they didn’t at the time. It’s because the world has changed.

But there was an element of oppression I couldn’t get around. If you know the history, you know that the most idealistic, anti-nationalist settlers insisted on a closed Hebrew society: you can’t hire outside labor, that sort of thing. You could see the motivation. They didn’t want to become what the first settlers were: landowners who had cheap Arab labor. They wanted to work the land. Nevertheless, there’s an exclusionary character to it. Which then led into the policy of the state and became quite ugly later. So it was kind of an internal conflict that was never resolved. ...

[deep]

This is just terrible.

I am convinced that the Israelis do not want to reach a settlement agreement.

Israel passes referendum law for ceding annexed land - CNN.com

[AchtungBono]

Originally Posted by deep

This is just terrible.

I am convinced that the Israelis do not want to reach a settlement agreement.

Israel passes referendum law for ceding annexed land - CNN.com

On the contrary, we do want to reach an agreement very much - but we don't want to commit suicide in order to achieve this.

There are thousands of people living on the Golan Heights and in the west bank that will have to be relocated when a final agreement is reached. The Golan Heights is a strategic location which overlooks the entire northern area of Israel and of course any further compromise on the west bank will compromise the security of our central cities and leave them well within the range of the terrorists missiles.

Therefore, if the Syrians come to us with a really serious and sincere plan for true peace, which means the end of the state of war between us and the normalization of relations between the countries, then it will be worth the compromise and sacrifice.

As for the west bank, it's the same situation: If the (true) Palestinian leadership decides that they've had enough and they want to lay down their arms (meaning to overthrow and disarm Hamas) and co-exist with us side by side in two separate yet friendly intertwined nations, then it will also be worth whatever compromise we have to make to achieve this peace.

As for East Jerusalem - I don't believe in any compromise here. Jerusalem has always been our capital city since bible days (and yes...I know about the various conquests its gone through) and we will never relinquish our city in general and the holy places in particular. I believe the status quo will remain in force in Jerusalem even after a settlement is reached.

So there you have it, I would like to think that I have the right to decide whether or not I believe that any future settlement will guarantee the security and peace of me and my family, and therefore I will participate in any referendum that is brought before me and I will study the facts very carefully before casting my vote on an issue that has such far-reaching implications for everyone in the region.

In any case, this whole issue is mute because I don't think the Arab nations will ever want to make peace with us so the whole issue of a referendum isn't relevant because it will never get to that stage - at least not with the current Arab leaders.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by AchtungBono

Therefore, if the Syrians come to us with a really serious and sincere plan for true peace, which means the end of the state of war between us and the normalization of relations between the countries, then it will be worth the compromise and sacrifice.

As for the west bank, it's the same situation: If the (true) Palestinian leadership decides that they've had enough and they want to lay down their arms (meaning to overthrow and disarm Hamas) and co-exist with us side by side in two separate yet friendly intertwined nations, then it will also be worth whatever compromise we have to make to achieve this peace.

As for East Jerusalem - I don't believe in any compromise here. Jerusalem has always been our capital city since bible days (and yes...I know about the various conquests its gone through) and we will never relinquish our city in general and the holy places in particular. I believe the status quo will remain in force in Jerusalem even after a settlement is reached.

I think it's hilarious that you demand the other side to come to the table without pre-conditions. And I say that as no joke.

[AchtungBono]

Originally Posted by anitram

I think it's hilarious that you demand the other side to come to the table without pre-conditions. And I say that as no joke.

What you call preconditions I call safeguarding my life.....there's nothing wrong with that.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by AchtungBono

What you call preconditions I call safeguarding my life.....there's nothing wrong with that.

Then you should be fine with Palestinian pre-conditions that they see are imperative to guarding themselves as a people.

[AchtungBono]

Originally Posted by anitram

Then you should be fine with Palestinian pre-conditions that they see are imperative to guarding themselves as a people.

I have no problem with both sides reaching an agreement that will enable each side to live in peace and quiet - without compromising each other's safety and security.

[deep]

Obama: getting 'poned' Bibi style

November 25th, 2010
Without adopting a new approach, the Obama administration will fail in its quest to bring peace to Palestine/Israel, writes Mark LeVine.


The Obama administration continues to be led on a leash, regarding the Middle East peace process

If you don't have a child between 7 and 13 years old, you're probably furrowing your brow right now, wondering what the word "pone" could possibly mean.

It hasn't made it into respectable dictionaries yet; but it's taken over the elementary schoolyards and playgrounds where I live. And there's no better word to describe how well Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has played the Obama administration.

According to urban lore, "pone" was coined by young fans of the boy band the Jonas Brothers (who recently rocked Abu Dhabi in what was surely one of the stranger concerts in human history). In reality, the term comes from a common misspelling of the word "owned" as "pwned" in text and chat messages. It roughly translates into adult-speak as being completely "owning" by an opponent in a sport or game, to the point of humiliation. ("You got totally poned, dude," is a common refrain around my house after a particularly one-sided basketball).

Considering the President's well known skills on the hardwood, it's doubtful Netanyahu could 'pone' Obama in a game of one-on-one basketball. But on the field of diplomacy the Israeli continues to school his American opponent - and have no doubt about it, the US and Israel might be close "allies," but Obama is being treated as little better than an opponent to be vanquished rather than a patron to be respected.

Despite the immense power disparity in the American's favour, it's not hard to figure out why the Israelis continuously win such lopsided victories, most recently in the agreement of the Americans to provided yet more billions of dollars worth of advanced fighter jets in return for another limited (read: illusionary) settlement freeze.

The President might be from Chicago, but you can't play the kind of rough and tumble politics for which his home town is famous if the game is fixed and referees are on the take.

With the US 'weapondollar-petrodollar' complex having a stranglehold on US policy-making in the Middle East and Congress and the media literally owned by conservative supporters of Israel, it's difficult to imagine how even Phil Jackson could design a playbook to overcome the political realities that have hamstrung President Obama in his quest to bring peace to Israel/Palestine.


Time to change the game

One underlying reason for this difficulty lies in the nature of the conflict itself. The basic problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been, and remains, two-fold: It is a zero-sum conflict over territory whose two opponents ground their identities in the notion of exclusive control of territory by one ethnonational group.

This link between ethnicity and exclusive control of identity has constituted the standard (although not the only) model of sovereignty in the modern world, defining the political norm for hundreds of years.

Within Zionism and later Israeli politics, the Left, as represented by the Labour movement, has always failed to lead the Jewish national community - despite a century of lofty rhetoric - precisely because in the end Labour Zionism's territorial imperatives have trumped progressive ideals.

And so it was the Labour movement that envisioned the "conquest of land" that became a cornerstone of Jewish settlement before and after 1948, while the Labour Party presided over the most damaging expansion of Israeli settlements, during the Oslo years.

Obama came into office hoping to change the rules governing US diplomacy towards Israel. But his efforts were doomed as he quickly ran afoul of the ironclad rules governing a century of zero-sum ethnoterritorial conflict.

Entering the diplomatic ring with neither the right equipment nor a team who understood these rules, the Administration was quite literally poned by the Israelis when it tried early on to get the Netanyahu government to agree to a settlement freeze, suffering a blow from which it has yet to recover.

Yet the President is by no means out of the game. What he needs to realise, however, is that if he can't change the game he can change the rules surrounding what constitutes a goal, and through it, victory-or rather peace-in the conflict.

Moving beyond sovereignty-territory axis

It might seem strange to imagine a non-territorially grounded resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but there is in fact nothing to say that such a political-territorial arrangement is the only viable model for Israeli and Palestinian identities to take, or even the best one.

Indeed, various alternative forms of identity have been imagined by members o the two communities for almost a century, most of them focusing on shared sovereignty-either a binational or single-state solution.

The problem with such alternative solutions is that while most Palestinians would welcome them, hardly any Israelis would agree to them as long as they were offered in the context of a territorially grounded notion of sovereignty. The reason is clear: such an arrangement would very quickly mean the end of a Jewish state, with Jews living as a minority in a country they previously controlled.

It would seem that any viable solution in the near term would still have to involve two sovereign states "living side by side," as the much abused phrase describes it.

Yet a two-state solution based on the Oslo-style land-for-peace formula is practically impossible, as Israel has achieved such a deep presence in the West Bank-one that it continues to expand, despite itself-that territorial separation is (and has been for a generation) all but impossible.

The conundrum for those working for peace, then, is how to design a solution that would retain two-states while moving beyond the zero-sum problematic that has always dragged down the two-state solution.

Solving a difficult puzzle

A difficult puzzle to be sure, however for the last two years a group of Palestinian and Israeli scholars and policy-makers, with the assistance of a former high-ranking Swedish diplomat with a long history of involvement in regional peace efforts have been working hard to solve it (here it's worth recalling that the "Oslo" peace process actually started in Stockholm, before being handed over by Swedish diplomats to their Norwegian counterparts after a new government came to power that didn't support their back channel efforts).

Called the Parallel States Project, the group, whose roster includes former senior settlement leaders as well as Palestinians with longstanding ties to the PLO leadership, early on concluded that nothing short of a wholesale reimagining of Israeli and Palestinian identities in a manner that moved beyond territorial sovereignty while allowing each community to identify and remain loyal to its own state and identity would lift the impasse that has for so long doomed negotiations.

The core component of a Parallel States solution is the move from a two-dimensional notion of sovereignty based on fixed borders, to parallel, or better, overlapping notions of sovereignty, in which Israeli and Palestinian states could each claim sovereignty over the whole territory in a manner that would not infringe on the rights and claims of the other state, or its citizens.

How to pull off such a seemingly impossible magic trick? The answer is as simple as it is profound: Disassemble the triangle linking the citizen to her or his state through the particular piece of territory - Tel Aviv or Nablus, Ariel or Jaffa - on which he or she lives, and replace it with a direct link between the individual citizen and her or his respective state that would holds firm regardless of whether one is a Palestinian living in Herzliyya or a Jewish Israeli living in Gaza.

Specifically, the two most important implications of a parallel states solution are that settlements are no longer an obstacle to peace and Palestinians could implement the Right of Return because. Enabling both is the ability of Jews and Palestinians to live anywhere in the space of historical Palestine/Eretz Yisrael in a parallel states scenario.

Jews could continue to live in their biblical heartland of the West Bank without being settlers (this accounts or why several of the core members of the group are active members of the settlement movement), while Palestinians dislocated by settlements would receive compensation and/or previously Israeli controlled land.

Palestinians, including the millions of refugees whose right of return is perhaps the single biggest obstacle to peace, could also live anywhere within the 1967 borders of Israel because no matter how many Palestinian lived there it would not change the demographic balance of the Jewish state, whose demographic basis would not be tied to territory. And of course, both peoples could live throughout Jerusalem, returning the city to the more demographically checkered and cosmopolitan identity it had developed before 1948.

And so the three biggest obstacles to peace - settlements and refugees and Jerusalem - would be resolved through a parallel states solution.

Of course, a parallel states solution would not be easy. Numerous considerations - from how to develop the Palestinian economy in a way the finally gives it significant autonomy while retaining strong ties both to Israel and the larger world, to developing the unique security arrangements necessary to satisfy Israel's focus on strategic and personal security and Palestinians' need for physical security and freedom from occupation. The legal systems of both states would also have to be harmonised.

But if the totality of the innovations necessary to create a parallel states structure is unprecedented, the fact is that most of the individual changes are not, as they've already been conceived of and even implemented (with varying levels of success to be sure) in conflict zones as diverse as Cyprus and Nagorno Karabagh.

What is needed more than outside-the-box thinking is outside-the-box leadership. And while Israelis and Palestinians could desperately use a new and courageous generation of leaders, the need is nowhere greater than on the part of an Obama Administration which has until now exhibited a tragic predilection for embracing the status quo while calling it change.

If the President is willing to take the risk of reaching out for creative solutions to this interminable conflict, there is a chance he will help enable the kind of change Israelis and Palestinians can actually believe in. If not, he'll continue to get poned by Netanyahu and his American allies, and we will all be the losers for it.

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books)

I have little to no confidence in a two state solution being reached, there are not enough reasonable Israelis for this to happen.

[AchtungBono]

Originally Posted by deep

I have little to no confidence in a two state solution being reached, there are not enough reasonable Israelis for this to happen.

So you actually think the Palestinians are TOTALLY reasonable and WE'RE the only ones putting sticks in the wheels of peace? I find that hard to believe.
You can't really be putting the entire blame on us, right?