In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer wrote that "the extension of Israeli sovereignty to certain territories in Judea and Samaria will not, as many critics suggest, destroy the two-state solution. But it will shatter the two-state illusion."
"In doing so," Dermer explained, "it will open the door to a realistic two-state solution and get the peace process out of the cul-de-sac it has been stuck in for two decades."
Dermer emphasized that rather than call for tens of thousands of Jews to be uprooted from their homes, the plan calls for "a peace in which innovative infrastructure solutions enable both Israelis and Palestinians to travel freely within their respective states."
"The plan does ask Israel to make significant concessions," he noted, "including more than doubling the size of the territory the Palestinians control today."
"But the peace deal it envisions would leave Israel with defensible borders, security control west of the Jordan River, sovereignty over a united Jerusalem and resolve the Palestinian refugee issue outside of Israel."
Dermer also emphasized that giving the "Palestinians" "less than a state" was something that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin encouraged in 1995. He also noted that for the past 20 years, Palestinian Authority leaders have rejected all of Israel's overtures and offers, while "systematically promoting a culture that rejects peace and glorifies terrorism, including by providing a lifetime of financial support for terrorists who murder Jews."
This, he explained, is because the Arab-Israeli conflict "has always been about rejecting the Jewish state" and has "never been about establishing a Palestinian state."
"The current two-state 'consensus' is nothing more than a two-state illusion. And that is why Israel must pursue a different course to advance peace.
"By shattering the two-state illusion and advancing a two-state solution, Israel hopes it will open up a realistic path to peace," he concluded.
