A.B. Yehoshua
A.B. YehoshuaFlash 90

Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua, known for his leftist views, admitted in an article published on Haaretz on Sunday that the two-state plan to solve the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict is no longer relevant.

"For 50 years, that is, for most of my adult life, I worked tirelessly for the two-state solution, in the face of countless frustrations both on the part of the Israeli governments and the Palestinian Authority,” Yehoshua wrote, adding, “Me too, like all the other members of the peace camp, hoped that the world, especially the United States and Europe, will exert economic and diplomatic pressure on both sides to force them to find the way to a historic compromise for one of the longest and most complex conflicts since the beginning of the 20th century."

He noted that during the time of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, there was a chance to bring the solution to fruition. "Prior to his stepping down, Olmert initiated a detailed and generous plan to divide the land of Israel into two states, but [PA chairman] Abu Mazen, according to Olmert's testimony, avoided most of the meetings which were meant to discuss this plan."

However, according to the writer, at a time when a significant part of the world's countries favor a two-state solution, he himself acknowledges that the chances of realizing it are slim. "I and some of my good friends, which fought for it for over 50 years, feel that this vision can no longer be realized in reality, and it serves only as a deceptive and cunning cover for a slow but profound crawl into the reality of a vicious occupation and legal and social apartheid that we in the peace camp, on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side, accept with fatigue and fatalism."

"Therefore," Yehoshua wrote, "we must try to examine the reality with intellectual honesty and try to think of other solutions that will stop this process and drag it back. It is not the Jewish and Zionist identity of the State of Israel that is now in danger but rather the humanity of the Palestinians under our rule.”

Two years ago, Yehoshua said in a radio interview that “it doesn’t make sense to talk about two states” and even appeared to take a page from the playbook of the Jewish Home party, whose leader Naftali Bennett has pushed Israel to annex the portion of Judea and Samaria that includes all Israeli communities and only 4% of the total Arab population over the Green Line.