Iran’s Palestinian fault line

Iran may be poised to exploit the continued divide in relations between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as the PA shows further signs of strain and the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution seem increasingly unlikely.

Daoud Kuttab suggests that a two-state solution may be all but dead, absent a massive international diplomatic intervention. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhyahu’s “unconditional support” for expanded settlement construction in the West Bank, including in an area known as E1, would cut off the north and south of the West Bank from one another. “Palestinian officials have often repeated the statement that the two-state solution is dead or almost dead. The E1 settlement possibility is clearly one tangible case in which such a claim can be physically checked out and proven to be truly detrimental to the potential of an independent and interconnected Palestinian state,” Kuttab writes.

Akiva Eldar laments that Morocco’s decision not to host the Arab League summit this year is another sign of the missed opportunity offered by the Saudi-brokered Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. Kuttab proposes that “an international effort to replicate the Iranian agreement process and solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict might work if there is seriousness behind the French effort and if Washington is willing to spend political capital to make it work.”