>These are the "realities on the ground" that lead Bush to conclude
>that Israel can have everything it wants and the Palestinians don't
>even rate being consulted. Does it signal the end of the two state
>"solution"?
Bush and Sharon's happy little confab doesn't change a damn thing. They can only implement their plans if Palestinians and the rest of the world let them. Nothing was said Wednesday that the U.S. and Israel haven't been saying for years, as Ali Abunimah points out:
"On the day of Sharon's Washington visit, Yasser Arafat issued a hyperbolic statement from his Ramallah prison predicting that Bush's guarantees would "end the peace process" and cancel all existing agreements between Israel and the Palestinians - as if there were a peace process, and signed agreements were worth more than the paper they are printed on to either Bush or Sharon.
"But, really, what is all the fuss about? Sharon and Bush did not say anything new. In fact, Sharon's position indicates a significant shift towards Israel's traditional Labor-led "peace camp," while Bush simply rephrased formulas already used by former president Bill Clinton. [...] "So what if Bush is against the right of return as were Clinton and Barak? The right of return still exists and it will not disappear just because Bush and Sharon want it to. Palestinians, thank goodness, do not draw their inalienable human rights from the lips of George Bush."
http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article2577.shtml
Besides, the two-state solution has been dead for some time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1051598,00.html http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031103&s=lazare
Eric