President Obama will quickly find himself sinking in the political quicksand which has claimed former American Presidents: Carter, Clinton and Bush, if he embarks on trying to achieve any two-state solution in the current political climate prevailing in the West Bank and Gaza.
Before he takes the plunge, President Obama would do well to contemplate the following advice of respected author and journalist, Tom Segev, who has accurately summed up the current situation in an article written by him in this month's Le Monde Diplomatique:
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All possible solutions for ultimate peace are already on the table - and none can be realised. Even Obama himself can do nothing to create final peace. Making life more liveable for this and the next generation seems the improvement that is most possible and the most urgent.
Ambassador Beecroft's peremptory rejection of Jordan returning to the West Bank to make life easier for the Arab residents living there - and thereby freeing them from Israeli occupation by restoring the status quo existing between 1948-1967 - may well turn out to have been too hasty and ill advised.
America may have to pressure its closest ally in the Arab world - Jordan - to do just that.
In the Middle East it is always preferable to dance to the slow waltz than the quickstep.
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