The Last Gasp of the Two State Solution

e1mapDanny Seidemann is an Israeli attorney and the region’s leading expert on land and property rights. An immigrant to Israel as a young man and a committed Zionist, Seidemann insisted to me today that the only real pro-Israel position is one that fully supports a two-state solution to the conflict with Palestinians.

“There is still time,” he tells me, “but if any more of the big settlements are built near East Jerusalem, the West Bank will be effectively cut in two and the two state solution will be impossible.”

It’s the projected settlement known as “E-1” that troubles Seidemann the most, and every few weeks he drives to the site just to make sure nothing is being built. Work on E-1 was started briefly in 2006, until a Seidemann op-ed in the New York Times explained how it would be the death of the two-state solution — the explicit policy goal of the U.S., Israel, and Palestine.

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Standing on a high ridge at the edge of East Jerusalem, Seidemann asks me to look out over the Judean desert toward a huge Jewish settlement called Mishor Adumim. E-1 he tells me would fill in all the space between that settlement and the boundaries of East Jersusalem, leaving only a small area of land along the Jordan River connecting the northern and southern halves of the West Bank.

“If E-1 is built, the possibility of achieving a two state solution is over,” says Seidemann, and with it Israel’s best hope for peace.

Another concern of Seidemann’s is the dwindling Christian population of East Jersusalem and the West Bank. The Christian presence, he argues, is important to both sides, Jews and Palestinians. The fate of the Christian community is like “a canary in the mine shaft” for the future of the Holy Land.

Listen to what Seidemann has to say for himself. I shot this video of him overlooking the Mount of Olives, with Jerusalem in the background.

Author

  • Deal W. Hudson

    Deal W. Hudson is ​publisher and editor of The Christian Review and the host of “Church and Culture,” a weekly two-hour radio show on the Ave Maria Radio Network.​ He is the former publisher and editor of Crisis Magazine.

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