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"That puts us in a very dangerous situation Indeed. If you don't have
a two- state solution you have a one-state solution, one state with
two classes of citizens if that state is to have a Jewish character
or a democratic secular state In Palestine, which means the death
of Israel within 10 years."
Finger-pointing is rampant, with each side accusing the other of
lacking the political resolve to make two states work. Israelis see
the Oct. 21 bus bombing, example of the Palestinian failure to keep
up their end of the land-for-peace bargain.
While Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the attack,
claimed by Islamic Jihad, Israel's leadership declared Mr. Arafat
responsible "by direct commission or omission" for the blast.
"Are they ready to put a stop to terror?" asks Ephraim Inbar, a
political science professor at Barnan University outside Tel Aviv.
"For the time being the answer would be negative, and so they
have failed the basic criteria of a state, establishing a monopoly
over the use of power. You can't have a state with
militias running around," he says.
Critics who charge that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lacks the will
to make concessions are wrong, says Mr. Inbar. "I don't think he's in
love with the idea of a two-state solution, but he has said that he's in
favor of a very incremental approach, an Interim agreement, that
he's willing to make painful concessions.
Strife over settlements
Some of those concessions are laid out in the US road map. In the
first of three stages to take place through 2006, Palestinians must
end violence and enact political reform while Israel, among other
things, dismantles settlement outposts - small structures built without
any of the necessary Israeli building permits, usually to extend the
area controlled by a settlement - and freezes settlement construction.
Settlements - communities built in the occupied territories and illegal
under international law - are a thorny issue for Mr. Sharon. He has

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