The United States wants Israel to commit itself to its version of a two-state solution which seeks to preserve “Israeli apartheid,” says David Cronin, a journalist and political activist from Belgium.
Cronin made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Friday, when asked about recent remarks by National Security Adviser Susan Rice about the Obama administration’s expectations from both the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority to commit to a two-state solution.
“We look to the next Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to demonstrate — through policies and actions — a genuine commitment to a two-state solution,” Rice said Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Arab American Institute.
Cronin said, “The United States is putting pressure on Netanyahu to commit to a two-state solution… but does it make more likely that Israel is going to allow the formation of a viable Palestinian state, in my opinion, it does not.”
“If a Palestinian state was actually formed, it was probably only comprised of a minuscule sliver of historic Palestine and the Palestinians would be probably confined to even smaller ghettos than what they’re confined to at the moment,” added Cronin, a contributing editor of Electronic Intifada.
The kind of two-state solution that is being discussed by US and Israeli officials “is about preserving some form of Israeli apartheid and allowing Israel to accord Jews greater privileges than everyone else,” he noted.
The majority of Palestinian activists are “opposed to” the US-backed solution, and instead they want a “democratic state” that would guarantee equal rights for all the people living in that state, he said.
“It’s significant that the voices coming from serious Palestinian activists are diametrically opposed to what western leaders are saying,” Cronin concluded.
AT/HRJ