WHY BOTHER ?

When Obama announced that he was reaching out to the Muslim world, I predicted that he would move U.S. policy closer to the Palestinian side. Now it looks as if the Obama administration is getting ready to push for a Palestinian state by pressuring Israel into accepting the suicidal concessions demanded of it by the Palestinians with the support of the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

Obama was caught on camera by journalists on Wednesday bowing in deference to Saudi King Abdullah as he greeted him at the G20 meeting in London. The President later expressed his support for the 2002 Saudi Peace Plan in his meeting Thursday with the Saudi monarch. That Saudi plan would almost certainly lead to the eventual destruction of the Jewish state.

Indications that the Obama administrateion will revise our Middle East policy away from one favoring Israel are that Obama's first phone call as President was to Palestinian Authority President Abbas and his first TV interview was on the Al-Arabiya network. And now Obama is bowing to and embracing King Abdullah and expressing his support for the Saudi "peace" plan.

I believe that Israel's new prim-minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and his administration will try to find a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians which will not compromise the Jewish state's long-term security. The Palestinians will not accept any peace proposal that will guarantee Israel's survival. Netanyahu will not accept any demands from the Obama administration, the U.N., the E.U. and Russia that are not in Israel's best interests. Thus the prospects for a two-state solution seem to be rather dim and no peace appears to be in sight.

A Norwegian poll revealed that the majority of Palestinians oppose a two-state solution and one-third of them want to see the Jewish state annihilated. If that's true, why even bother to seek a solution?

INDEPENDENT NORWEGIAN POLL: PALESTINIAN MAJORITY OPPOSES TWO STATES

DEBKAfile Special Report
April 3, 2009

Amid the ping-pong between Washington and Jerusalem over the validity of a Palestinian state established alongside Israel as the end-product of peace negotiations, the Norwegian Fafo institute which sponsored the 1993 Oslo Framework accords decided to find out how the Palestinians felt about this solution. Its main discovery was that a majority, 53 percent, of Palestinians (like Israelis), is against two states.

This figure breaks down into 33 percent, who opt for the annihilation of the state of Israel, whether by political means or force of arms - to be replaced by a single Islamic republic on all parts of the country; and 20 percent, which favors a united Israeli-Palestinian state, to be eventually engulfed by the latter population.

When Hamas members are polled separately, support for two states drops to 21 percent.

Publication of these findings by the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, which is supported by Norwegian foreign ministry and respected by European Middle East policy-makers, indicates that its researchers have given up on the Oslo Accords and the two-state goal pursued by Washington.

However, DEBKAfile's Washington sources expect extreme reluctance on the part of the Obama administration to abandon this goal because it is the only policy objective it has developed and is being used, furthermore, as a key to open the administration's diplomatic door to the Muslim world, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan arena (now lumped together as the "Afpak" front).

The US president's advisers are urging him to speed up Israel-Palestinian peacemaking for these ends - even if it means foisting the two-state objective on the Israelis. Proof that the Palestinians too will have to be whipped into line brings the venture close to a mission impossible.