2015年经济学人 以色列和巴勒斯坦 僵局再起（在线收听）

Israel and Palestine

Take a break

The two-state solution is still the only one that makes sense. But it won't happen this time round

IT IS a cliché: every time a worthy mediator, in this case John Kerry,

America's secretary of state, sets about ending the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians,

people say the clock-hand has reached “a minute to midnight”;

disaster will follow if the parties fail to agree.

By Mr Kerry's timetable, the chimes will ring out dolefully at the end of this month (see article).

He may find a last-minute rewinding ploy to keep both sides burbling a bit longer.

But there is scant chance, even with that extension, of a two-state deal being done.

Mr Kerry has tried his heroic best, but this round of peacemaking is fizzling out.

Disaster will not immediately follow. As things stand, Israel is not under threat,

despite its understandable aversion to the prospect of other states in the Middle East, such as Iran, matching it with nuclear weapons.

Israel is a prosperous democracy in a region of chaos and bloodshed.

Binyamin Netanyahu, its prime minister (pictured left), is unchallenged.

The Palestinians demanding a state are weak, divided and quiescent; morose as they are, few favour a return to suicide-bombing.

Yet Israel cannot afford to be complacent in the longer run,

for this stalemate poses a real threat if the country is to preserve its essence as both Jewish and democratic.

It cannot stay both, if it indefinitely controls the Palestinian territories and their people while denying them full rights under Israeli law, including the vote.

And if the Palestinians were enfranchised, demography suggests that a Greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river,

including Gaza, would no longer be predominantly Jewish.

Israel must give the Palestinians a proper state of their own if it is to remain a Jewish democracy.

Mr Netanyahu knows this. But most of his own Likud party and much of his coalition still roundly reject the two-state idea,

and he is loth to face them down. This time, he has added a clutch of extra demands which his predecessors,

notably Ehud Barack at Camp David in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem in 2008,

saw no need for—on such issues as boundaries, Jerusalem and the Jordan valley, which many in Likud now want to annex.

He has let Jewish settlements on the West Bank expand as fast as ever.

And he says the Palestinians must first acknowledge Israel as a specifically Jewish state.

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas (pictured right), says he cannot submit to such demands as a precondition.

He would be ditched by his own people if he were to cast Israel's Arabs (who are a fifth of Israeli citizens)

into what they see as a second-class status and to disavow the Palestinians' claimed “right of return” to Israel proper.

The fact that the Palestinians will have to climb down in the final stage of any deal only adds, like the Israeli demands, to a sense of bluster.

In an ideal world, Mr Netanyahu, a clever populist, would emulate the late Ariel Sharon by abandoning his party's right wing and the rejectionists within his coalition in order to forge a new ruling coalition genuinely committed to the two-state option;

the Knesset arithmetic would let him do so. And Mr Abbas would step down in favour of a more dynamic leader,

such as Marwan Barghouti , imprisoned in an Israeli jail for murder: he helped organise a bloody uprising.

That, though, might give him the clout to drag the Palestinians into making painful but game-changing concessions.

Instead, both sides are embarking on a blame game.

Neither will win. The Palestinians are still stateless—and their prospective state is getting smaller.

The Israelis face not just the growing opprobrium of the outside world,

boycotts and all, but also the prospect of missing another opportunity to ensure the survival of a country that is both democratic and Jewish.