With Israel's obstinacy, a one state solution where the Israelis will have to live with an enlarged Arab-Israeli population is near

With the new US congress elected into office recently which are more Israel friendly than the previous one, I think all hope for a two state solution has been extinguished. The Egyptian Government is just being polite in stating the obvious. 


Soon Israeli Jews will have to live with the Palestinians in a enlarged Israel which cannot now be called home for the Jews only, Gentiles are reluctantly welcome.

Egypt: time running out for Mideast two-state plan


By Tsvetelia Tsolova
SOFIA | Wed Dec 8, 2010 9:17am EST
(Reuters) - Major powers should push Israel and the Palestinians to agree a deadline for establishing an independent Palestinian state before a two-state solution becomes impossible to achieve, Egypt said Wednesday.


Israelis and Palestinians held three rounds of U.S.-backed talks in September. Palestinians pulled out when a 10-month freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem ended on September 26.


In some of Egypt's strongest language since the talks ended, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said discussions should shift to an "end-game for a Palestinian settlement" after Washington had failed to push Israel to halt building work.


"The Americans have been informing all of us that their efforts did not succeed. They wanted to reach a moratorium on settlement activities with Israel. That came to an end now."


He said Egypt's concern was that "we continue haggling without (making) any breakthrough, then in few years there would not be a possibility of two states living side by side."


The Palestinians Wednesday said "Israeli obstinacy" made Washington give up on efforts to freeze Jewish settlements and questioned whether the United States could ever help them attain independence.


Egypt became the first Arab state to reach peace with Israel when it signed a deal in 1979.


"You have a bi-national state or you have occupation or apartheid. The ... option which we are all preferring is to have two states instead of one state based on apartheid," Aboul Gheit said at a briefing during a visit to Bulgaria.


...(Writing by Tom Pfeiffer in Cairo; Editing by Matthew Jones)

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