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The Federation Plan
- Abstract
Although the world and the new Obama administration continue to pin their hopes on it, a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would involve the removal of all Jewish settlements from a Palestine established along Israel’s 1967 borders with Jordan has no chance of coming to pass. If it was not achievable in the fifteen years since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Agreement, it is not achievable now. The facts speak for themselves:
Fact. In 1993, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, there were some 100,000 Jewish inhabitants, or “settlers” as they are called, in the West Bank. In 2009 there are 300,000 (plus 200,000 more Jews living across the pre-1967 line in Jerusalem) and their numbers are increasing by close to 5 percent a year, faster than anywhere else in Israel.
About the Author
Hillel Halkin is a columnist for the New York Sun and a veteran contributor to COMMENTARY. Portions of the present essay were delivered at Northwestern University in March as the Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization.
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