Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu asserts Israel’s ‘right to build’ in Jerusalem. Israel pokes the US in the eye by announcing the building of 1,600 new settlements in sensitive East Jerusalem. The Palestinians regard this as extreme provocation and threaten a third intifada.

When we were in Ramallah for the Meeting House centenary celebrations, local Palestinians told us that they no longer believed in a two-state solution. The only solution for them was one democratic country in which everyone could live regardless of identity and that all those who have been forced to leave had the right to return. ‘It is a problem for 10.6 million Palestinians around the world, not just those living in the West Bank and Gaza’, one person said. Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and an advocate of nonviolent resistance, was in no doubt whatsoever that the situation in Palestine reflected the worst kind of human rights violations. His view was that the term peace process was ‘a misleading concept, a time-wasting nonsense and a cover for Israeli de facto measures on the ground’. He also said that it was the longest occupation in modern history and that Israel was creating the worst system of apartheid. ‘The Israelis’, Mustafa Barghouti said, ‘will only negotiate on the 2005 Sharon Plan’.

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