So the basis of this thread is that the two state solution is unpalatable to both parties?

So both parties need to compromise. No?

"based on history, geography and demography"

history hey singer? What the history of the last 2000 years or so? The history that says there was no Israel? The history that says the whole of this disputed area was home to and ruled by arabs not jews?

geography. We know what you mean by that dont we singer. Eretz Israel. Everything west of the Jordan. Nakba II.

demography. Whos demography singer? The demography that before long arabs will outnumber jews in the former territories of palestine and will be able to vote their way in? Or suffer a new apartheid that no one will be able to deny? Or the demography that your settlers are trying to bring about with their illegal occupation of palestinian land?

Give it up already singer. The Palestinians will never become Jordanians. They dont want that. They want their own land. The land they live on. The land they have lived on for thousands of years.

None of your lies about expelling jews and wanting to destroy Israel (as if they could ) will change the fact that it is Israel killing hundreds, thousands even. It is Israel stealing land and punishing whole populations of civilians. It is Israel holding the weapons of mass destruction and the means to use them. It is Israel that refuses to set its own borders. It is Israel that bulldozes peoples homes and cuts them off from their farms. It is Israel that blockades and besieges whole communitys in the hope that they will surrender. And then bombs them anyway and attacks and murderers activists who sail to their aid. And if the Palestinians so much as look like fighting back it is terrorism.

Give me a break.

#Shadow Minister

Israel and the PLO have not reached a compromise after 20 years of fruitless negotiations. Replacing the PLO with Jordan as Israel's negotiating partner has much better prospects of success in my opinion.

Such negotiations - if successful - would return the major part of the West Bank to Jordan - the last Arab state to occupy it between 1948-1967.

Restoring the status quo - so far as is now possible given the changed circumstances on the ground - to the position existing prior to the outbreak of the Six Day War on 5 June 1967 would be a huge step in helping to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict.

International pressure can help bring this about.

Instead of flogging the dead "two-state solution" envisaged by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap - pressing for a resolution based on the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter now seems the best option

#mikk

I rely on the following history,geography and demography:

1. No sovereign independent Arab state has ever existed in Palestine in recorded history.

2. Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years before it was conquered by the victorious Allied Powers in World War 1.

3. The Allied Powers allocated 99.99% of the conquered Ottoman territories to the Arabs for self determination and the remaining 0.01% - Palestine - to the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home - pursuant to decisions taken by the Allied Powers at the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920.

These decisions were unanimously adopted by the League of Nations in confirming the Mandates for Palestine, Syria and the Lebanon, and Mesopotamia

4. 77% of Palestine offered to the Jews under the Mandate was excised by Great Britain in 1922 - to later become the independent Arab state of Transjordan in 1946 (renamed Jordan in 1950)

5. Jordan and Israel are the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine.

6. The West Bank and Gaza comprise just 6% of former Palestine where sovereignty (last vested in Great Britain between 1920-1948) still remains unallocated between Jews and Arabs.

7. The West Bank was unified with Transjordan in 1950 and renamed Jordan - after Transjordan had captured and occupied the West Bank in 1948 - remaining a single territorial entity until 1967.

8. Arab residents of the West Bank were Jordanian citizens until 1988.

9. Close settlement by Jews in the West Bank is encouraged by Article 6 of the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter.

10. The Arabs rejected partition in 1937 and 1947 and did nothing to create an independent Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza between 1948-1967 when not one Jew lived there. Trying to achieve such a result in 2013 has proved impossible.

Israel and Jordan for these reasons are eminently suited to now try and resolve the future sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza by returning as far as possible to the armistice lines existing at 5 June 1967.