The Hill
December 26, 2014, 07:00 am
During a vexatious meeting with U.S. officials in 2009, during which he was notified that the United States could not secure a freeze on Israeli settlement building, Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian negotiator, became exasperated by the seemingly unending U.S.-led “peace process.” “I’ve been doing this for 16 years,” he informed the newly appointed Obama administration officials. “This is the last shot,” he warned.
In the ensuring five years, however, the Palestinian negotiating team has jettisoned this ultimatum and tried repeatedly to salvage a negotiated two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue from the wreckage of an unprecedented expansion of Israeli settlements in the very occupied Palestinian territory ostensibly set aside for an independent state. It was the rapacious nature of this Israeli settlement expansion that caused Secretary of State John Kerry to caution that “the window for a two-state solution is shutting.” Nearly two years ago he testified to Congress that “we have some period of time — a year to year-and-a-half to two years, or it’s over.”