Fatah's Central Committee Deputy Secretary Jibril Rajoub is optimistic. As one of the people closest to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, he is intimately aware of all the enormous hurdles and obstacles along the way to a diplomatic agreement with Israel. But in his view, Secretary of State John Kerry’s guideline will ultimately lead to a peace agreement based on a two-state solution. It is not because the Israeli leadership, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is interested in a compromise with the Palestinians, but because of international pressure on Israel, which has been intensifying over time.
“Netanyahu is the neighborhood bully,” he kept repeating every few moments during a phone call this week on Feb. 10 with Al-Monitor, “but the expansion in the West Bank, the settlements, the racism and the annexation of land — all that is over.” Rajoub explains that even Netanyahu now realizes that the rules of the game have changed, and what two intifadas and a violent struggle against Israel have failed to achieve, the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) will. “It should worry the Israelis. Israel has become an extremist state. What is happening with the settlers in the West Bank is a black stain on the Jews, and I don’t want to use any worse terms to describe it.”