ISRAEL’s radical Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu habitually defies UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, the latest being UNSC 2334, calling for Israel to refrain from building illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The resolution was unanimously passed with 14 votes in favour, while the US chose, historically, to abstain.

By expanding its occupation in the West Bank through a process of land-grabs and demolitions of Palestinian homes in their thousands, Jewish fundamentalists have left no space for a future Palestinian state. To add, it has built a 708 kilometre wall that cuts through Palestinian territories, establishing an even worse kind of apartheid than that witnessed in South Africa.

The two-state solution, as agreed to in the Oslo Accord of 1993 and endorsed by various regimes in Israel and its Western allies, is dead.

Palestinians are squeezed into tiny villages, scattered and cut off from each other — the map of West Bank now resembles mere dots, surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements and outposts. The occupation extends as far as the Jordanian border. The West Bank is now virtually a colony of the occupier.

Given these conditions, only one reasonable option is left — to have one state, with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side democratically with equal rights. In such a scenario, as US secretary of state, John Kerry, said, the Israeli state would have to lose its Jewish theocratic identity given that Palestinians outnumber them demographically. The alternative – a strict, dictatorial Zionist regime – is unacceptable in international law and to the world community. Unless this changes, Israel’s orthodox leadership is calling for its own destruction.

Dr Farooq Hasnat
Lahore

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2017