The death of the Palestinian state

I found this piece by Jdledell at TPM Cafe interesting. Here are some excerpts.

As many of you know I have spent a lot of time in Israel this past year. In November, I buried my sister Rachel (cancer) and spent almost two months helping her husband, David, close up their affairs in Ariel for him to move back to his native city, Haifa.

I have never been as discouraged for Israel's future and hope for a peace agreement as now. I spent a lot of time in the settlements for that is where most of my relatives reside. I came to three firm convictions as a result of my travels and discussions.

1 - The building in the settlements is occuring at breakneck speed. It's not just in the E-5 corridor with Ma'ale Adumim but throughout the West Bank. I was stunned at the amount of new development in the Jordan Valley. The settlers firmly believe if they can hold off peace negotiations for 5 years, the settlements will be impossible to disband. In fact, I heard two Kadima Knesset members (Boim and Breznitz) advocate this very position in two separate small group Q&A's...

I saw maps of proposed fence to wall off the Jordan Valley from these autonomous Palestinian areas. Given the growth and dispersal of the settlements I do not see what is going to stop or even slow down this growth given what appears to be covert government support. This is the plan - hold off for 5 years and then it will be too late for a viable Palestinian state.

2 - The treatment of the Palestinians in the West bank continues to be ugly although I cannot tell if it is actually worse than in the past. However, I will relate one episode that capsulizes for me the entire situation. David and I had some legal papers for their son, Benjamin, to sign. He's in the IDF and was on checkpoint duty. We drove down to see him so he could quickly sign the papers. There I witnessed an IDF man, open his zipper and pee on the shoes of a young Palestinian man who was standing in the line(there were also women and children in the line). It was obviously an attempt to humiliate the man and goad him into doing something that would get him arrested. The fellow IDF's would then parade by and hold their noses while laughing at the man...