Perhaps this is an unintentional error, but there are 3 main aquifiers are within the West Bank borders, providing Israel with 30 percent of its water. Groundwater resources are literally below the feet of Palestinians in the West Bank, however access to the water is restricted and prohibited. In the Israeli proposal to relieve need for water in the West Bank by building a desalination plant, they demand continued control over West Bank ground water. So, if Palestine were to make a unilateral declaration of statehood, Israel would lose its control over West Bank resources: an added reason Israel opposes Palestinian statehood.

It sounds a little crazy now but there is a surprising amount of support for that via a two year plan that Salam Fayyad has. Fayyad speak the Western political language and has impressive credentials. He has already garnered serious support for his plan in the EU and if rumours hold some pretty powerful players in the Obama administration

The Israelis are scared, Netanyahu has already asked Obama to veto it so he knows it could happen and it's a danger. Furthermore I don't think Obama has given him any real assurance that the states will veto that resolution. It may be the bargaining chip they need to get Israel to the negotiation table. And a circuitous route around the peace process and its inevitable protracted death.
The release of Marwan Barghouti could also create a unified Palestinian front able to make concessions and row in a single direction, I doubt that will happen but who knows.

Look, the same rule applies to all countries, especially those in arid regions. Israel's existence as a nation couldn't have happened had it not seized the water resources it did. A Palestinian state can't exist without real water rights either.

And people there are already drinking toilet water, though they may not even know it. The Mountain Aquifer is being polluted with human and industrial waste from Palestinian villages and settlements in the West Bank. Israel demands Palestinians to submit to having their wastewater treated along with Israeli settlers, or it won't grant approval for the plants. The Palestinians refuse, perhaps rightly so. But political imperatives in both states prevent real cooperation on keeping the Mountain Aquifer's water clean. That's water both sides drink. If it's contaminated with pollutants, both sides lose.

You're only half right, really, about the Clinton thing. What she did do is hilariously embarrassing and disastrously accidental, a result of mis-tranlsation. But at the end of the day, it's the President who needs to show up and conduct diplomacy. What happened to Hillary has little bearing on her ability to conduct diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

What I'm really suspicious of is that there ever can be a sovereign state that has the borders people are planning on. It would be surrounded by a hostile and paranoid entity, and respond with their own hostility and paranoia. The Palestinians are vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and it seems like that's going to be a state of affairs that continues for the foreseeable future. I mean, I might not take Netanyahu on his word about everything, but I'm pretty sure he's sincere when he says a future Palestinian state should not have an army. How does a country guarantee a durable sovereignty.

Look, the United States hadn't had an army to repel the British assault on our shores and cities, the American experiment would've come to an abrupt end. The British navy was already impressing our sailors, a flagrant breach of Americans' sovereign human rights, just like "administrative detention" for random, innocent Palestinians is a violation of their human rights.

A single state solution obviates the sad inevitability of a defenseless Palestinian state, a stillborn country. Of course, I don't think it's going to happen. I'd say the catastrophe of trying to find a two state solution will continue for the foreseeable future to.

"If Jerusalem is completely annexed and cleansed of all Muslims the fallout over the Al-Aqsa would spark a massive uprising and probable war." Well sure. But this is 2009 not 1949 and the actual expulsion of Palestinians is a little more difficult of Israel to do in one fell swoop. It'll happen over decades, as it has already.

And as completely unfeasible a one state solution might be it would certainly ease the task of integrated water management. You see, water is the one area where a win-win solution is possible. Right now, the aquifers are being polluted and depleted due to drought, lack of sewage treatment, and over-abstraction. If that could end, both sides would be in better shape.

And as ridiculous as a one state solution might sound, it actually seems more plausible than a contiguous, sovereign Palestine, considering the billions of dollars and decades of effort Israel has made to integrate the West Bank's infrastructure into it's own.

Let's just try to approach the situation calmly.

No, he wants to waste time with toothless projects while Jerusalem and the West Bank are carved up. Do you just assume that if a politician says something it is automatically true?

http://pathofmostresistance.org/the-israel-lobbie...

Anyway the Quartet is doing the job of economic recovery already, the very best recovery would come in the form of a sovereign state with contiguous borders
The Israeli government does not want a two state solution, that should be obvious to even the dimmest observer. They certainly don’t want a one state solution, that would be political suicide. So what do they want? Well to waste time in order to colonise the very best, most fertile, most water abundant and most strategic parts of Palestine for Israel. Whatever is left over the Palestinians can do what they like with. If Jerusalem is completely annexed and cleansed of all Muslims the fallout over the Al-Aqsa would spark a massive uprising and probable war.