Nine months of US-driven diplomacy have left Israelis and Palestinians less hopeful than ever about a comprehensive peace agreement to end their century of conflict. Although a formula may yet be found to somehow prolong the talks past an end-of-April deadline, they are on the brink of collapse and the search is already on for new ideas.
US Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts have exposed vast differences: On sharing Jerusalem, resolving the situation of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees, and even borders, the sides seem nowhere close to agreement.
"Unfortunately, under the current conditions, it is apparently not possible to reach 'end of conflict' — or, in more poetic language, a peace agreement," said dovish Cabinet member Amram Mitzna, a former general in charge of the West Bank.
The effort by Palestinians and their supporters to engineer an economic boycott of Israel also likely will grow. And so will concerns that a third Palestinian uprising will erupt.
Some Israelis, like powerful Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, call for a punitive annexation of parts of the West Bank, which seems a hollow threat but inflames tempers further.
Beneath the surface there is a powerful force at work: A growing current in Israel says that one way or another, the country must separate itself from the Palestinians with a real border. If not, the occupied territories and Israel will eventually come to be seen as one entity, with 12 million people, half of whom are Arabs — hardly the Zionist vision of a Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the situation is messy: Some of the Arabs under Israel's control, in pre-1967 Israel, have citizenship, while those in the West Bank — whose land and entry points and water resources are controlled by Israel — do not. Even though the West Bank is formally not in Israel, the country builds settlements there and their residents vote in Israeli elections. The settlers can freely enter and leave the West Bank, while Palestinians cannot. The situation seems unsustainable, and is starting to draw comparisons to apartheid-era South Africa even in Israel itself.
Here are some directions the discourse may take:
PARTIAL SETTLEMENT — WITH OLD CITY THROWN IN?
Mitzna and a host of others call for an interim arrangement in which the Palestinians would get statehood on most but not all the land they seek. They would get nothing on the refugees, but would not have to renounce any further claims either.
The Palestinians fear that freed of what Israelis call the "demographic danger," Israel's motivation to ever cede anything further will vanish.
Israel would have to present serious enticements to overcome such objections.
Such an enticement might be a new arrangement in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, a key issue which to date has been tethered to the final settlement idea. It might agree to joint custody of the area with its Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy sites, possibly with the inclusion other Muslim countries and outside powers — a sort of Vatican of the Holy Land. That would be a big symbolic prize — even if it still leaves open the question of the rest of east Jerusalem, adjacent to the ancient area, which the Palestinians also seek as a capital.
UNILATERAL PULLOUT — WITH MILITARY OCCUPATION?
There are plenty of Israelis who cannot envision a peace deal of any kind yet still fear the demographic issue enough to want a pullout.
Ariel Sharon, prime minister from 2001-2006, was a longtime hawk but eventually concluded the occupation was bad for Israel. He shocked everyone by ordering all Israeli soldiers out of the Gaza Strip and evicting the almost 10,000 Jewish settlers living there. Israel thus unburdened itself of ruling Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians at a meager territorial cost.
Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke in early 2006. His successor Ehud Olmert won elections a few months later on the promise of repeating the move in the West Bank, which has some 2.5 million Palestinians.
But the West Bank — its borders formed by the armistice lines of the 1948-49 war that created Israel — is more valuable than Gaza. Its highland juts into Israel enough to leave Israel a few miles wide at its narrowest point, surrounds Jerusalem on three sides and is packed with biblical sites. Moreover, the Gaza pullout didn't bring peace on that border. In 2007, the Islamic militants of Hamas seized control there, and since then Israel has faced periodic rocket barrages and fought two mini-wars with Hamas.
But the unilateral pullout idea lives on: Set a border that would likely incorporate some West Bank land into Israel to include some settlements, and then dismantle the rest, without waiting for Palestinian agreement or recompense.
ONE STATE?
If there is no separation, the logical long-term default seems to be a single state of Israelis and Palestinians, in which neither has superior rights. Most Israelis dismiss this as not plausible — but history may not ask Israel its view.
How long can Israelis continue to insist that beyond the 1967 lines — which they hardly themselves respect, considering the settlement construction — there must be a different regime than in Israel proper, with Palestinians denied full democratic rights, unlike their brethren within the country's official borders.
Even many Israelis now see a single democratic state as inevitable. Some are leftists who always disliked the nationalism inherent in establishing a Jewish state; others cannot bring themselves to abandon the land, often for religious reasons; and then there are others who have simply despaired of a way out.
Abbas alluded to this in a recent meeting with Israeli lawmakers, threatening to "hand over the keys" of the Palestinians' autonomy government, saddle Israel with direct control of millions of Palestinians, and let it fend for itself.