Israel nowadays is like a plane flying on autopilot. The course is preplanned, the speed predetermined. The destination is the creation of a Greater Israel which will include half of the West Bank and a small part of the Gaza Strip (almost 90 per cent of historical Palestine): this will be a Greater Israel without a Palestinian presence, with high walls separating it from the indigenous population of Palestine, who will be crammed into two huge prison camps in Gaza and what's left of the West Bank. Palestinians inside Israel can either leave and join the millions of refugees languishing in the camps or submit to an apartheid system of discrimination and abuse. In many parts of the Western world the media still describe this as the only safe route to peace and stability. The discourse of peace employed by the Quartet—the US, the EU, Russia and the UN—since the Road Map came into being seems to blind many reasonable observers, who still seem to believe that this course makes sense. But it should have long been clear that Israel is heading for disaster. (9)
The failure to achieve a negotiated Palestinian-Israeli peace after four decades of occupation is not due to a lack of imaginative and realistic frameworks and principles or to changing political events and leaders. Failure is due, first and foremost, to ideological obstacles, to Zionist ethno-religious nationalism that has not yet accepted coexisting with another people. The situation is bleak short of concerted international action to force Israel to adhere to international law.
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