Memo to John Kerry: 'Two-State Solution' Bankrupt

Dear Secretary of State John Kerry,

Greetings! I assume that you will have already finished your short trip to Israel by the time this is published, so allow me to apologize for not writing to you before your plane took off from Washington. It is quite possible that if, by some chance, you had seen this then, you would have considered staying home instead of crossing the Atlantic.

Let me cut to the chase. Yesterday, I conducted another tour of the settlements in Samaria, particularly those settlements lying on the mountain ridge that cuts through the territory. While doing that, I reached a very clear conclusion. Allow me to express it by saying, “Forget about it!” Or, to put it slightly differently, “Don’t waste your time.” What I mean to say is that the old formula of “two states for two peoples” is bankrupt. It’s dead, it kicked the bucket, it’s pushing up daisies, it went the way of Elvis. Anyone who repeats that mantra today should reconsider. They should hit the reboot button or simply pay a visit to the West Bank.

Some 8 million people now live in Israel. I do not know how many of them have actually toured Samaria recently, except for the people who live there of course. Driving along those first class highways that were built at an enormous cost throughout the entire West Bank — and I mean five-star roads with multiple lanes and proper lighting, like you won’t find outside the small towns of southern Israel, or in the north for that matter — it is hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that they are here to stay. Almost half a million Israelis now live in the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria” as it has been known since late Prime Minister Menachem Begin came to power). Most of them are concentrated in the major settlement blocs, but even the mountain ridge is now home to more than fifty thousand Israelis, some of them in illegal outposts. We’re talking about thousands of families.