Cohen: Two-state solution essential for Jewish state

The Telegraph

By Uriel Heilman · April 20, 2009

With Bibi Netanyahu dithering about supporting a Palestinian state, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen argues that the two-state solition is critical to Israel's survival as a Jewish state:

The population of Arabs in the Holy Land, at about 5.4 million, will one day overtake the number of Jews. So a two-state solution is essential to Israel’s survival as a Jewish state. Persisting in the 42-year-old occupation and the building of settlements gnaws at the very foundations of the Zionist dream.

Netanyahu now wants Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, who have recognized Israel, to go further and recognize it as a Jewish state, even before he accepts a hypothetical Palestinian state. That’s a sign of the Israeli angst occupation has institutionalized.
Closure is the overcoming of horror. It is the achievement of normality through responsibility. It cannot be attained through the inflation of threats, the perpetuation of fears, or retreat into the victimhood that sees every act, however violent, as defensive.

Read the full column here.