What will Israel do if Abbas announces that by a reasonable date, say, December 31, 2010, the option of a state and a half – Israel and alongside it a Palestinian entity – will go the way of the West Bank’s “village leagues” of the 1980s? The question therefore is not why Netanyahu needs Abbas and Fayyad, but why they need Netanyahu.
Prof. Sari Nusseibeh, among the most moderate of the Palestinian elite, who long ago gave up on the idea of a two-state solution, proposed that the PA be dissolved more than a year ago. He even urged the European Union to stop funding the PA, claiming that the money was funding the fig leaf of the Israeli occupation.
Nusseibeh suggested that the Europeans condition aid on the establishment of an independent state for the Palestinians or earmark it for their integration into Israeli society. Such a policy would perhaps shake the Israelis and the Palestinians out of their complacency and lack of commitment to a peace agreement, Nusseibeh told Haaretz in August 2008. His position is now being echoed throughout the territories.
Does a unilateral Palestinian state really seem likely?
