Former acting US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Monday that settling the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of a two-state solution was no longer workable and suggested splitting Palestine between Egypt and Jordan. "Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn," Bolton wrote in The Washington Post. "Hamas has killed the idea, and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection."
Hamas won parliamentary elections deemed fair by international observers in 2006 but was boycotted by the West for refusing to give up armed resistance against Israeli occupation.
A two-state solution has been officially adopted as the basis for solving the Middle East conflict by all interested parties, including Israel and the administration of US President George W. Bush, in which Bolton has served. But he now argues that the peace process is "obviously not progressing ... probably going backward."
"Instead, we should look to a 'three-state' approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty," says the former ambassador, who now works for the American Enterprise Institute, a hard-line pro-Israeli think-tank in Washington. "Having the two Arab states re-extend their prior political authority is an authentic way to extend the zone of peace and, more important, build on governments that are providing peace and stability in their own countries," he wrote. |