Palestine in tatters

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as we have known it since the 1993 signing of the Oslo accords, essentially died more than three years ago with the demise of the final status talks between then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

Continuing to pretend there is any life left in the Oslo Accords and President Bush’s 2002 Roadmap is the height of folly and recklessness. Believing it can ever be implemented is with respect - gross stupidity.

Maybe President Obama might find it easier to adopt a new mantra based on the following remark recently made by an apparently intelligent 18 year old girl from Ramallah - who told the person interviewing her for a scholarship to a college in America:

... the [Jewish] “settlers” [in the West Bank] are really refugees. They, too, are returning to their ancestral homelands. It wouldn’t be fair to tell them to leave.

Maybe there is a message for President Obama in these few well chosen words - stop engaging in fiction - come back into the real world - and face the following facts:

1. The Jewish-Arab conflict over Palestine has been ongoing for 130 years - long before there were “Israelis”, Palestinians”, “Transjordanians” and “Jordanians”.
2. Jews have their sovereign State in 17% of former Palestine - now called Israel.
3. Arabs have their sovereign state in 77% of former Palestine.- now called Jordan
4. Just 6% of former Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - remains to be allocated between Jews and Arabs - who both are claiming sovereignty in these areas.
5. Attempts between Israel and the PLO to resolve sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza have irretrievably broken down.
6. New Arab negotiating partners are now needed to replace the PLO and sit down with Israel to try and resolve the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.  

Those Arab partners should be Jordan and Egypt - the only two Arab States to have signed peace treaties with Israel and the last Arab occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank between 1948-1967.

Facing up to these realities is necessary - if President Obama and America is to become relevant in advancing the resolution of this long running conflict.

President Obama does not have the luxury of time - because even this window of opportunity - which has remained open since 6 June 1967 - is fast being slammed in his face.