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Obama should see Palestinian deal as next step in peace talks

Israel is not averse to dealing with Hamas on security issues, so why quit now?
A Palestinian sits in front of a poster depicting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah March 17, 2014. Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets on Monday to show their support for President Mahmoud Abbas, who is under heavy pressure as he prepares to meet U.S. President Barack Obama. 
REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3HFEM

When US Secretary of State John Kerry announced last July that he would have a final status agreement in his pocket by April 29 it is a fair guess that he never imagined the administration of President Barack Obama would be faced with a cascading collapse of the key elements of its political and economic program. Yet, that is the sorry state of the diplomatic landscape today. Instead of an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), there is the emerging prospect of Palestinian reconciliation — for years, the very last item on almost everyone’s to-do list. And rather than declare historic progress on the creation of two states, Kerry finds himself in the dock for using the A-word to describe Israel’s sorry future in the absence of such an agreement.

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative,” Kerry explained to a small audience of senior officials and experts from the United States, Western Europe, Russia and Japan, as reported by the Daily Beast. “Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens, or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state. Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution.”

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