Israel drifts in sea of trouble

Shaul Goldstein does not mince his words. The 52-year-old mayor of Gush Etzion - a collection of Israeli settlements south of Jerusalem - does not believe that there will be peace between his nation and the Palestinians in his lifetime.

He also regards the "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a "total lie". In fact, he believes Palestine does not exist and never has.

"There is no Palestinian people. It is an invention of the world. The Palestine land was for the Jews. They (the world) invented Palestinian people to fight Israel ...

"But let's say there are Palestinians and they want their own state. There is a state where they are already a majority - (and that is) Jordan," Goldstein told a group of visiting South African journalists at his regional council offices a week ago.

The father of seven, who has been mayor of this scenic tourism region for the past 12 years, would also not call the West Bank by its name: "The Bible does not mention Palestine, the West Bank or Gaza. It talks of Judea and Samaria."

With US President Barack Obama pushing both sides to re-open negotiations that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state with borders that run "on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps", there are suggestions that some of the Gush Etzion settlements could be handed over to the new state.

Goldstein is not willing to entertain the possibility, insisting that the area holds a special place in the history of the Jews.

"The Jews were here but were forced out in 1948 because the area was under siege. They were surrounded by Arabs. My father fought in the battle here and 240 defenders of the area fell. It was occupied, destroyed and burned," he said.

It is tempting to dismiss Goldstein as a rabid right winger on the fringes of Israeli politics. After all, according to journalist and author Benjamin Pogrund, about 60% of the Israeli population supports a two-state solution as a means of ending the conflict.

But it is also true that the right wing is on the ascendancy. According to a recent survey, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud Party, of which Goldstein is a Central Committee member, would win between 47% and 60% of the popular vote if elections were held now.

Pogrund, a former anti-apartheid South African editor who regards himself as being on the left of Israeli politics, attributes this shift to the right to a feeling among citizens that their country is being "demonised" and that its security is compromised.

Pogrund said: "The problem is that all of it is well based ... there are threats of bomb attacks. There are bomb attacks! There is paranoia, but it is justified paranoia. The whole place is under siege all the time, and that creates a mentality."

This sense of perpetual siege is visible even on the streets of cities like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where casually dressed youths, on leave from their compulsory military duty, walk around carrying high-calibre rifles.

You see it in Sderot, a tiny town about 5km from the Gaza Strip, which was the target of most of the rocket attacks launched by Hamas militants during the Second Intifada.

Although relative peace has returned to the town, rocket-resistant concrete shelters built on playgrounds are reminders of how devastating the conflict in the region can be.

The theme of the Jewish people as a nation under attack, whose survival is dependent on the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, keeps recurring even when one visits the ancient City of David neighbourhood; the Wailing Wall, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and other tourist landmarks in Jerusalem.

So, while most Israelis accept that the only way of bringing peace to the region will be through the creation of a Palestinian state, they are not willing to give in on a number of issues they believe would compromise their security.

The most topical of these, thanks partly to Obama's key speech three weeks ago, is the call for Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after winning the Six-Day War against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in June 1967.

Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, says withdrawing from the Golan Heights and other areas seized during the war would mean that Israel's territory would be too small for the country to be able to defend itself against future attacks.

"You don't pull out and hope for the best. I wish it were that easy... In the last decade, we had two examples of Israel pulling out and we had the opposite of peace. We pulled out of south Lebanon and that was followed by Hezbollah missile attacks. In 2005, we pulled out of Gaza. Hamas came in and started attacking us," Regev said.

Whether they're on the left or the right wing, Israelis are equally intransigent on the contentious issue of allowing millions of Palestinian refugees - forced to flee their homes in 1948 - to return to Israel.

"Israel is a Jewish state," said Shlomo Neguse Molla, an Ethiopian Jew and a representative of the opposition centre-right Kadima Party in the Knesset - the Israeli parliament.

"We don't agree for the refugees to come back to Israel. Never! The Palestinians should go to their own homeland."

And then there is Hamas, the Islamic militant Palestinian movement that controls the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu's government said it would only talk to the organisation if Hamas recognised the right of Israel to exist and it renounced violence.

In the past, the Israeli government argued that there was no point in seeking talks with the Palestinians as they were split into two factions - one controlled by Hamas and the other by President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority. However, Netanyahu's administration is now unhappy with the "unity government" deal recently signed by the two Palestinian parties, arguing that the agreement made it impossible for Israel to negotiate with a government which had Hamas militants in its ranks.

But Hamas's reported intention not to directly participate in future governments, even if it wins elections, could pave the way for talks to resume between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Is there hope of breaking the stalemate?

Israel's official opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Tzipi Livni - a longtime supporter of a two-state solution - believes so.

"We can't afford to be in this limbo we have been in since 1967 ... Time is not on our side because, the longer it takes, the more difficult it becomes.

The Kadima leader says: "Extremism is rising in the region ... Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the reason for the rise in extremism, it is clear that such groups abuse the conflict to popularise their extremist views."

Livni's optimism is based on the fact that all Israeli political parties, be they "hawk" or "dove", now accept the inevitability of a Palestinian state.

"I believe there is a need to end the conflict in an agreement. The question is whether we can have an agreement before September," she said.

In September, Abbas plans to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognise the Palestinian state.

Israel and the US are opposed to the move, but the Palestinian media says Abbas already has the support of 75% of the UN's member states.

Palestinian academic Walid Salem believes Abbas is using the UN threat to force Netanyahu to return to the negotiating table with meaningful proposals to end the stalemate on the future of the Palestinian state.

Failure by the two leaders to urgently find a solution could be catastrophic for both sides.

It could lead to more Palestinian youths, frustrated by endless, inconclusive peace talks, joining militant groups.

On the Israeli side, voices of reason would be drowned out as the likes of Goldstein increasingly take centre stage.