Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

In his United Nations speech, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the Security Council to “to urgently adopt a resolution comprising the basis and foundations for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that would serve as a binding reference and guide for all if the vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, is to survive and if peace is to prevail in the land of peace.” In November 2009 I drafted a proposal for a Security Council resolution which I shared with the leaders of Israel, the PLO and the United States. The following is that draft:

EXPRESSING ITS continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East, emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every state in the area can live in security, affirms that the fulfillment of UN Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, which should include the application of both the following principles:

1. The establishment of the state of Palestine on the basis of the June 4, 1967 borders, in the areas of the West Bank and Gaza including East Jerusalem.

2. Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of the State of Israel and the state of Palestine in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

3. The governments of the State of Israel and the state of Palestine will enter into immediate negotiations between them on the exact borders between them based on the June 4, 1967 borders with agreed upon territorial exchanges of equal size and quality. The guiding principle in the determination of the borders is that the state of Palestine will be composed of 22 percent of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and the remaining 78% of the territory will be the State of Israel.

4. This settlement will establish Palestine as the Palestinian homeland, just as Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people. Both States are free to maintain their own immigration policies allowing for the return of nationals to each state respectively. The issue concerning the rights of Palestinian refugees will be dealt with in negotiations between the parties seeking to reach a just and agreed upon solution that will put an end to the decades of suffering of the Palestinian refugees.

5. The issue of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab and Islamic countries will be dealt with in the framework of bilateral negotiations between Israel and the second parties directly involved.

6. Accepting this resolution: Israel must immediately demonstrate support for the creation of a prosperous and successful Palestinian state by removing unauthorized outposts, and ending settlement expansion. The government of the state of Palestine must demonstrate that their State will create opportunity for all its citizens and govern justly and must show that a Palestinian state will accept its responsibility and have the capability to be a source of stability and peace for its own citizens, for the people of Israel and for the whole region.

7. In Accordance with the Principles laid down in UN Resolution 181 from November 29, 1947, both states will respect the rights of national minorities within their borders and grant them full equality under the law and in practice.

9. The Security Council recognizes the city of Jerusalem as the capitals of both states and calls on the Governments of the two states to negotiate the modalities for application of such in the city.

10. The Security Council recognizes the importance of the holy sites in Jerusalem to all three religions and proposes that they be placed under an international guardianship guaranteeing free and open access to all people who respect the sanctity of the sites or any other acceptable arrangement reached by agreement of the parties.

11. The Security Council empowers the Quartet to work with the governments of the State of Israel and the state of Palestine to conclude negotiations on the permanent borders of the two states within one year, including the modalities for the city of Jerusalem. The Quartet will report back to the Security Council on progress of those negotiations on a quarterly basis.

12. In accordance with Chapter VI and Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council announces its readiness to deploy peace-keeping troops to the state of Palestine to assist and to facilitate the withdrawal of Israeli security forces from the territories of the state of Palestine.

The Security Council calls on the General Assembly to act in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure, to: decide that the state of Palestine is a peace-loving state which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations; and decide to admit the state of Palestine to membership in the United Nations.

THE TWO-states solution was determined by the United Nations in UNGA Resolution 181 from November 29, 1947. This proposed Security Council resolution aims to put the entire international community behind the path towards ending the conflict, ending the Israeli occupation and creating a peaceful Palestinian state next to Israel on 22% of the land between the River and the Sea (far less than proposed in 1947).

Israel will finally achieve permanent recognized borders on 78% of the land between the river and the sea.

Jerusalem will finally be recognized and accepted as the capital of Israel when it is also recognized and accepted as the capital of Palestine.

As Abbas said in his UN speech: “We continue to sincerely extend our hands to the Israeli people to make peace. We realize that ultimately the two peoples must live and co-exist, each in their respective State… The core components of a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict do not require effort to discover, but rather what is needed is the will to implement them. And marathon negotiations are not required to determine them, but rather what is needed is the sincere intention reach peace. And those components are by no means a mysterious puzzle or intractable riddle, but rather are the clearest and most logical in the world.”

Spending days with the Jewish community of South Africa at Limmud is a unique opportunity to meet another dynamic, engaged Jewish community in the Diaspora. My lectures here have focused on political issues concerning Israel and the region, Israeli-Palestinian peace and conflict and the story of the secret back channel for the Schalit negotiations.

Throughout my time here, both in the Jewish community, and in media interviews with the non-Jewish South African press, I have been repeatedly asked my opinion on whether or not Israel is an apartheid state or if it is heading towards being an apartheid status.

Many of the Jews here were actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the past. I too grew up boycotting South Africa until 1994. I remember attending the first party at the home of the South African ambassador in Herzliya in 1994 for the inauguration of Nelson Mandela. After holding parties for years on South Africa Independence Day without participants, in 1994 there were over 1,000 people there, including prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, foreign minister Shimon Peres, and president Ezer Weitzman.

It was very emotional to see the Afrikaner ambassador stand tall (he was a big man anyway) with his fist in the air singing the new South African national anthem and watching President Nelson Mandela being sworn in. There was a sense in the air that the impossible was possible – and even we in Israel could, would someday enjoy peace.

MY ANSWERS to the questions about Israeli apartheid were that inside of Israel proper, within the borders of the “green line,” the one million Palestinian citizens of Israel (20 percent of our population), in principle enjoy equal rights, citizenship, participation, the right to vote and be elected. This is not apartheid.

I said that there is discrimination against them, some of it societal and some of it political and structural. In my mind there is no excuse whatsoever after 65 years of independence for the continued existence of discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. This should not even be part of our discourse.

The State of Israel must eliminate all forms of discrimination and ensure full and absolute equal rights and opportunities for all of its citizens. Our discourse regarding the Palestinian citizens of Israel should be focused on the challenge of how to create a greater sense of shared citizenship in our state.

Naturally the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes it more difficult, but we must rise to this challenge. I believe that this will also require us to come to terms with Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and all of its citizens. This will require us to define collective rights of a national minority in our state.

Thinking is terms of a possible Jewish national minority in a Palestinian state in the future may assist us in defining what this means, when we would also consider what could be the collective national rights of the Jewish minority in Palestine, as well. My answer did not satisfy them.

WHAT ABOUT the West Bank – isn’t there apartheid there? It was difficult for me to say no. There are two populations living there, each under a different legal status – one with political rights, and one without them.

One group lives in modern planned communities with infrastructure matching the wealth of Israel, and the other lives with backwards underdeveloped basic needs.

One group lives under civil law, the other under military law. One group has total freedom of movement, the other cannot move without permits and permissions. One lives under an economic system with a GDP per capita of almost $30,000 the other under $2,000.

How is this any different than a form of apartheid, ethnic/ national/religious separation rather than racial separation? Yes, we rule the West Bank as a form of apartheid.

Our stated policy is that we hope that there will be a Palestinian state and that the Palestinians will live in their own country and not under our control. But after 45 years of our control, no one is fooled by the idea that this is not an apartheid system because the majority of Palestinians live under the rule of their own Palestinian Authority. The PA is not a free sovereign party. It is under the direct control of Israel.

Even the Palestinian president and prime minister requires a travel and movement permit from Israel. Israel controls their borders, their economy, their land and population registry. The PA is basically equivalent in its power to a municipal government in Israel, not much more than that.

How then is this not a form of modernized apartheid? It is very poignant to think this and to hear this in South Africa. For some in the audience, especially the young people, the next question is, “So why not adopt the South Africa solution? Why not just grant everyone citizenship and allow them to vote?” The answer is because both we, the Jewish people, and the Palestinian people, want a state of their own. We both want a territorial expression of our national identity and we will not be prepared to be ruled over by the other side.

Therefore, there is no one-democratic-state solution to this conflict. There is no avoiding this conclusion if our Jewish senses and values effect our decision making and policies.

How can we Jews, with our history and heritage, allow ourselves to be the 21st century perpetuators of a modern form of apartheid? We were strangers in Egypt and now we are free. This is for me the central thread of our identity and the most important lesson of Judaism to humanity.

THERE ARE challenges, dangers and risks involved in making peace with the Palestinians, no doubt.

We know what they are and we have the intelligence to mitigate them and to come up with solutions to the problems.

The challenges, dangers and risks of the continuation of the status quo are far more detrimental to our state and our identity.

We must rise to impetrative of our Jewish values and experience and relieve ourselves of our apartheid status. We must be a free people in our land and in order to do that the Palestinians must also be a free people in their land.

Palestine is becoming a reality, whether we like it or not. The Palestinian Authority may not be increasing its sovereignty over a single centimeter of land, but the awareness of the emergence of the State of Palestine is spreading all over the world. The government of Israel might believe it has a veto over this process; it may believe it can prevent Palestine from becoming more than a “virtual” state, but it cannot.

The battle to prevent Palestinian statehood has been lost, and Israel had better come to terms with this emerging reality.

Yet rather than face this straight on and understand how its interests would be served by a free, independent, democratic and peaceful Palestine, this country is instead tightening its grip.

Our forces are arresting more peaceful activists and popular leaders, preventing protests against land confiscation, while inciting against Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority. The face of the occupation is becoming more visible and more ugly.

Palestinians, joined by internationals and a growing number of Israelis, are facing off with this ugly face every week all around the West Bank, from Naalin to Bil’in, from al-Masara to Nebi Salah, from Walaja to Oush al-Ghrab, from Sheikh Jarrah to Silwan.

In all these places, the scene is the same, week after week; a protest is staged to decry a land grab to expand some settlement, a wall or a fence by public popular committees of locals; they are joined by other Palestinians, Israelis and international solidarity supporters who march to the point of confrontation. Sometimes some of the young Palestinians will throw some stones; at other times, with no provocation, the tear gas, rubber or plastic-covered bullets, concussion grenades and “the skunk” (stinky liquid) come down. Lately it’s enough just to be there when the soldiers are riled up.

That’s what happened last week in Silwan and in Nebi Salah. When there are no television cameras around, the soldiers tend to take greater liberties, but today everyone has a camera in his or her pocket, and there are no more secrets.

When I witness this wanton violence my blood boils and I am filled with shame. These surely cannot be the Israeli defense forces; just what are they defending, and in whose name? The farmers of Bil’in whose land was taken for the expansion of Modi’in Illit are not protesting in order to destroy Israel; they just want their land and olive trees back, and even the Supreme Court supports them. But our government acts with blind disregard for the law, and without the slightest sense of wisdom.

WHEN IDF soldiers fire tear gas canisters in Nebi Salah even before even a single stone is thrown, I say we have lost ourselves, and can no longer claim to hold the moral high ground. And no one should tell me the horrific, inhuman murder of the Fogel family has any bearing; I’m tired of the competition of suffering. I don’t want anyone to suffer, and believe that if we were wise, and if we act in our real interests and if we have the eyes in our heads to see how the world is changing around us, we would notify the Palestinian people that we, the Jewish people, want to sponsor the UN resolution for Palestinian statehood. We would shout from every hilltop that we want the Palestinian people to be free in their land so that we, the Jewish people, can be free in our land. And we would sit with their leaders, pull out our maps, and plan our withdrawal from the emerging state together.

I call on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, on the paranoids and xenophobes who occupy the coalition seats in the Knesset, I appeal to the NGO monitors: Come to your senses! It is not too late to change course and turn enemies into allies. We have all paid a tremendous price, and everyone has lost. Compassion, understanding, a desire to work together so we can all live peacefully – this is how we can rescue ourselves from the growing hatred around the world toward Israel.

If we do the right thing, the whole world will not be against us. Let’s stop being so shallow as to actually think we can win battles with new hasbara, while attacking Jewish groups in America that don’t agree with the Israeli policies.

Our friends in Europe are about to join the rest of the world in recognizing Palestine. An American veto in the Security Council, and even a letter signed by 96 senators and 400 members of the House of Representatives will not prevent the state of Palestine from being born. We can try to oppose this process for a few more years, maybe, but we will not be able to block it.

If we ever hope to coexist with the state of Palestine, Israelis must join hands with Palestinians and nonviolently co-resist the occupation (special credit to my daughter Elisha and her partner Noam Lekach for the term). Our liberation and their liberation will be won together.

What would be so terrible if the state of Palestine continues to gain more and more recognition, even from Israel’s friends and allies? That is the game in play today. Almost all of the world’s leaders have come to the conclusion that the Netanyahu government has nothing to offer the Palestinians and that another round of negotiations at this time will be fruitless.

The Americans are also coming to the same conclusion, but it is more difficult for the self-appointed mediator and policeman of the world to accept the failure of its intervention and the limits of its power.

At the same time, the same leaders understand that the two-state solution must be saved. If Israel is unwilling, or unable to act in its own best interests by ending the occupation, the international community does not have to sit idly by as the best chance of peace withers away once again. The risks and consequences of another round of violence are too great to the parties, the region and to the world to allow an irresponsible Israeli leader to dictate the possible death of the only solution that can end the conflict.

No one is a great supporter of unilateralism. No one really believes that the conflict will be resolved through unilateral steps. It is quite evident that a negotiated agreement must be reached that will determine permanent borders and other core issues. Security arrangements must be agreed by both parties and supported by international monitors and peacekeeping forces. The lessons of the unilateral disengagement from Gaza without agreement have hopefully been learned by all.

But in the face of Israeli refusal to seriously engage in real negotiations and Palestinian refusal to come to the table until they see Israeli seriousness, the rules of the game need to be changed to compel the parties to reach a negotiated agreement.

BINYAMIN NETANYAHU supports the two-state solution – at least that is what he claims. Our prime minister is intelligent enough to understand exactly what that means; he knows what the permanent status peace agreement looks like. He is well aware that his predecessor Ehud Olmert was quite close to reaching an agreement, and both he and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud believe that with several more months of negotiations an agreement could have been reached.

That agreement would have brought about the birth of Palestine on more than 95 percent of the West Bank with territorial exchanges on a 1:1 basis, with two capitals in Jerusalem and some form of a special regime in the Old City. This is the agreement, there will be no other and this is also the vision of peace that almost every world leader supports.

So even if Netanyahu has a different vision of peace, in his heart of hearts he has to be aware that he cannot convince the Palestinians to accept less. He must also realize that Israel cannot allow itself to miss the possibility of reaching a negotiated agreement and there will probably never be a better opportunity than right now.

What can Israel do if the process of recognizing Palestine continues? Probably nothing. It can kick and scream, threaten and protest but unless it is interested in working against itself, there is actually very little that can be done to block the inevitable.

It can bring back checkpoints all over the West Bank as punishment. Will this help the security situation, which has never been better?

It can withhold taxes and customs which it collects for the Palestinians in the framework of one of the only aspects of the Oslo agreement still working. Will the US and the EU, which are bankrolling the establishment of the Palestinian state, sit idly in the face of breaches of working relationships which are so vital to stability and security?

It could prevent Palestinians from traveling because it controls all of the movements of the Palestinians. How long would that work and how could that be in its interest?

Israel could unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank, but this would cross lines in international relations that no government before has even seriously considered. It could get the US Congress to write more letters to President Barack Obama and more House or Senate resolutions backing its policies, but that would not really help.

Let’s face it, there is very little that Israel can actually do to prevent the world from recognizing Palestine. Eventually the US will also recognize it and, at least according to Netanyahu, so will Israel. So what are we waiting for? For decades we have tried to prevent the creation of the Palestinian state. One prime minister after the other since Yitzhak Rabin has come to the conclusion that the only way to end the conflict is by accepting the logic that was behind the 1947 UN partition plan. So much blood could have been saved if we had been wise enough to accept the inevitable when our neighbors did in 1988 (41 years too late). How much more blood must be shed before the inevitable is implemented?

The conflict is resolvable. The two-state solution is the only solution. It can be achieved today and there is no better leader than Netanyahu to do it. Netanyahu and Abbas can lead their peoples to a new beginning – a new day when the slogan two states for two-peoples becomes a reality.