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Which helps explain why, in a recent poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, the Hamas leader outpolled Abbas by something on the order of 70-30 on the question of who Palestinians would vote for as President if elections were held at that time. 

Brzezinski and other high former foreign relations officials publicly criticizing the Israeli position and calling for a hardened U.S. position that Israel must halt enlargement of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank before negotiations will resume to "clearly place the onus for the interruption where it belongs," whew! Times are definitely changing. 

Negotiation of a "2-state solution" for Israel and Palestine has never been anything more than an excuse for continuing the status quo, with Israel dominating both territories in an apartheid state. The 2-state solution, moreover, denies all residents of the former British Mandate Territory of Palestine (including present day Israel) of their fundamental right to self-determination of their form of government established by the U.N. Charter. And the notion of a 2-state solution with territorial swaps ignores the right of Arab residents of the Mandate Territory to return to their homes at the close of hostilities, a right specifically forbidden from being negotiable by Israel and the Palestinian authority; it is an individual right that governments cannot lawfully barter away.   I'm glad to see The Intercept taking a no holds barred, speak-truth-to-power  approach to the Israel-Palestine question. 

Under article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a treaty that Israel ratified: "(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. "(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality."  

This is the largest part of the real back story on John Kerry's feverish effort to negotiate a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine apartheid problem. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions ("BDS") movement against Israel is growing rapidly, nearly doubling the rate of growth of the former BDS movement that successfully ended apartheid government of South Africa.   Israel has become a pariah state diplomatically because of its war crimes against Palestinians and because of BDS, is increasingly becoming a pariah state economically. At the same time, Israel has illegally colonized Palestine to the extent that a 2-state solution is all but impossible, meaning that the most likely outcome is that Israel will cease being the "Jewish State" and be forced to grant equality to Palestinians as well in a new secular government. The situation became all the more dire for Israel as the "Jewish State" when the U.N. General Assembly granted Palestine observer state status, opening the way for Palestine to, e.g., pursue criminal prosecution of Israeli leaders for war crimes before the International Criminal Court.  That has dramatically increased the Palestinian Authority's leverage in negotiations. Kerry is on a rescue mission to see if he can coerce the Palestinian Authority to cede sufficient land and powers to Israel to make a 2-state solution credible. Kerry's leverage is that the U.S. has been underwriting the Palestinian Authority's expenses and can threaten to withdraw the financial support.  All of which brings it down to the question of Palestinian Authority leadership corruption. If the PA stands tall and refuses to accept Kerry's ridiculous demands, there will almost certainly be no 2-state solution, ever, because Israel continues to colonize Palestine and has locked up most of Palestine's water resources. Further colonization means still less water for an "independent" Palestine state. The Palestine Authority, on the other hand, suffered f

The withholding of the tax payments is indeed a violation of international law, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires inter alia an occupying power to preserve the existing civilian government to the maximum extent consistent with military requirements. Of course the continuing occupation itself is a war crime under the same Convention. Israel siezed the Palestinian territories in its illegal war of aggression in 1967. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel was requried to withdraw its military forces immediately upon the cessation of hostilities. It has been only the U.S. heavy foreign and military aid and exercise of its veto power and  at the U.N. Security Council that has permitted this atrocity to continue. 

Not mentioned in the article: the Knesset's Regulation Bill formally annexed territory inside the West Bank and holds that Israeli law, rather than military law, will now govern the annexed portions. That is the fact that establishes a clean break with the 2-state solution and flies in the face of international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly prohibits annexation and requires the immediate withdrawal of invading military forces from occupied territories immediately upon cessation of hostilities, which occurred in 1967. The two-state solution is dead, although the Regulation Bill will likely be overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. Trump gave Israel's ultra-right wing leaders way too much encouragement.

A true complication for the Obama Administration and Israeli government, if the Palestinian unity deal sticks. At Israel's urging, the U.S. formally designated Hamas as a Terrorist Organization™ shortly after it won a valid election to lead government in the Gaza Strip, imposing sanctions and criminal penalties on any person or legal entity that aids Hamas. With Gaza and the West Bank organized under a single government that includes Hamas, Obama may have to decide whether to end the Hamas terrorist designation or abandon attempts to broker a settlement of the Israel-Palestine question.  

This is an article in an Israeli newspaper. It omits mentioning that the Palestine Authority only joined the 15 international bodies after Israel had breached the negotiation agreement by refusing to release the last batch of Palestinian prisoners.  The PA in response to Israel's renewed military attacks on Gaza now says it will join the International Criminal Court, where Israeli leaders can be charged with war crimes, with genocide quite deservedly being high on the list of potential charges. However, it's likely that the U.S. would cut off aid to the PA if it files charges against Israeli leaders. Would another nation step in to fill the funding shortfall, e.g., Russia or one of the Gulf Coast states?  Maybe we will find out.

Smoke and mirrors. The EU, France, and the U.S. are trying to rescue Israel from the inevitable single-state solution if an independent Palestinian state is not recognized very soon. But Israel's bellicose government resists even that; it wants to annex the entirety of Palestine by pushing all the Muslim Palestinians out, one new settlement at a time. Meanwhile, the Palestine Authority threatens to join more treaties, including that for the International Criminal Court, and mumbles about ending its policing of the West Bank for Israel. And the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which is seeking a single state solution, gains momentum at an accelerating rate globally, which is what is driving all these diplomatic machinations.

Somewhat ironic that the path to prosecution in the U.S. for damage awards against foreign governments as "sponsors of terrorism" by the Israeli Mossad front, Shurat Hadin is now being used to go after those in the U.S. who fund Israeli terrorism against Palestinians.  More coverage here: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/palestinians-sue-pro-israel-tycoons-345bn-160307191923877.html

Highly recommended reading for those who wish to begin building an understanding of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the major root cause of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and likely soon, Iran. Palestinian Presiden Abbas addresses the U.N. General Assembly upon the occasion of the Palestinian Authority being granted the status of "observer state," which permits the P.A. to join the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court and initiate prosecution of Israeli officials for ware crimes. The resolution upgrading the Palestinians' status to a nonmember observer state at the U.N. was approved by a vote of 138-9, with 41 abstentions, in the 193-member world body. The U.S., Canada, and Czechoslovakia  were the only western nations voting "no." Israel's pariah nation status is now official and U.S. foreign policy is long overdue for overhaul in that regard. With friends like Israel, who needs enemies?