Israel, Palestine and the US

Letter November 29, 2012
It is high time for both the US and Israel to seize this historical moment and initiate a dialogue.

JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: British Foreign Secretary William Hague may be right in asking the US to move forward to settle the Israeli-Palestinian issue once and for all. He banks his optimism on three factors: 1) President Barack Obama has won the election with a comfortable majority, and can work on his two-state vision without much fear of the Jewish vote bank. 2) Hamas has once again proved that it can’t be put aside at the whim of Israel. 3) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is again seeking a ‘non-member’ observer status for his country.

It has been a tactical strategy on the part of Israel to deal with opponents on a piecemeal basis. By this they tend to disintegrate their opponents, preventing them from taking a united stand. The presence of Israeli forces in the West Bank, the unabated construction of new settlements, eviction of Palestinians from their fields and farms, ever-growing security checkpoints, the siege of Gaza which has converted the territory into the biggest prison on earth, the financial strangling of both the West Bank and Gaza by regulating the exports, tax money… the list goes on; all this can’t go forever as Palestinians seem more empowered by the support they are receiving from the new democracies in the region.


It is high time for both the US and Israel to seize this historical moment and initiate a dialogue, not to be meant to last forever without any result, but to address all disputes in totality.


Masood Khan


Published in The Express Tribune, November 30th, 2012.