Palestinians losing faith in 2-state solution

From the International Herald Tribune:

Even among the most moderate Palestinians, the credo of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beginning to erode.

Hamas, an Islamic group that refuses to recognize Israel, has already taken over Gaza, one of the two territories earmarked for a Palestinian state.

Now, with hopes fading for an agreement on statehood by the end of the year, leading pragmatists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the last bastions of Palestinian secular nationalism, are calling for a fundamental reassessment of their leadership's strategies and goals.

A growing number propose dismantling the internationally funded Palestinian Authority as a first step to expose the reality of Israel's continued occupation of territories it conquered in the 1967 war and to make Israel bear the direct responsibility and cost until a political solution is found.

Prominent mainstream Palestinians are increasingly warning that if they fail soon to achieve the kind of state they want - sovereign and independent, with East Jerusalem as its capital - they will favor instead a one-state solution based on a long-term fight for equal rights within the state of Israel, along the lines of the South African struggle.

In the past, one-state ultimatums have usually been intended as a pressure tactic to wring concessions out of Israel. Granting equal voting rights to millions of Palestinians in the territories would ultimately spell the end of the Zionist project of Jewish self-determination and a Jewish state.

But now these ultimatums also reflect an urge for a genuine reappraisal within the dwindling Palestinian nationalist camp as it despairs of achieving the kind of state it had envisaged and questions its own ability to survive.

The Palestinians want their cake and to eat it as well.

They have proven themselves incapable of taking care of themselves, so now they want Israel to take care of them, while they prepare to destroy Israel.