Israel.

Israel's on-going colony construction and other unilateral measures in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are effectively pre-empting the possibility of a two-state solution of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. If the international community continues to remain unwilling to reign in Israeli colony construction and expansion, irreversible "facts on the ground" and the de facto apartheid system such facts create will force Palestinian policy makers to re-evaluate the plausibility of a two state solution.

Israel's thirty-five year illegal colonial enterprise has not been, and cannot be, executed without forcefully dispossessing the indigenous Palestinian population of the rights guaranteed to them under UN Resolutions, the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international treaties. The full implementation of Israel's colonial designs for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which entails vast confiscation of Palestinian lands and water resources as well as disruption of Palestinian territorial contiguity, would leave the Palestinians with a "state" only in name.

Map of Israel, the Palestinian territories (West B...

Map showing the West Bank and Gaza Strip in relati...

Jerusalem and the West Bank

Israel's ultimate goal is to permit a Palestinian "state" which would be in effect the Middle Eastern equivalent of a Native American Indian Reservation with (i) no recognition of the Palestinian peoples' historic and religious attachment to Jerusalem, (ii) limited access to water and arable land and (iii) insufficient area to accommodate population growth and any returning refugees.

Israeli measures precluding a two state solution are most visible with regard to (i) Occupied East Jerusalem, (ii) colony construction and expansion and (iii) the so-called "security" wall currently being constructed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The Oslo accords are the foundation on which current peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are based.

Officially called the "Declaration of Principles," the accords were negotiated secretly by Israeli and Palestinian delegations in 1993 in Oslo, Norway, guided by Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst.

They were signed at a Washington ceremony...