James Heartfield wrote:
>
> The utopian solution would be a democratic polity without any
> affiliation to ethnicity or religion, in which everyone had equal
> rights, whether in the region currently known as Israel, the occupied
> territories or refugees from Palestine. The nearest anyone ever came to
> offering such a state were Palestinian nationalists in the 1970s, but
> that seems no longer to be on offer.
>
> The first positive thing to be done would be to stop the $2 billion per
> annum aid that Israel receives from the United States. Ultimately only
> the people of the middle east can come to a solution. But to start out
> from the premise that there must be two states at the end is simply to
> eternalise the conflict in a fantastic and unachievable form.
It is an interesting situation. All possible 'practical' solutions only reproduce the 'problem' in more acute form. There are one or two further possible positive things to do. There could be an embargo on arms sale to all entitiies in the region. Place the same restraints on trade with all states in the region that were imposed on trade with the USSR during the Cold War. Stop all peace processes. It would seem as though the utopian solution is in this case the only solution possible.
It is unlikely that the Palestinians will ever permanently refrain from resistance -- or that the radical Israelis will ever let them cease.
Carrol