U.K. - AFP
Britain worried US losing interest in Middle East peace: report
Date: Tue, Jul 20, 2004
LONDON (AFP) - The United States is losing interest in the Middle East peace process and hopes for a viable Palestinian state are disappearing, according to a British government assessment.
"The role of the USA, the country with the most leverage over Israel, is key," said the analysis, published Wednesday by the Guardian newspaper and written by the Department for International Development (DFID) in consultation with the Foreign Office.
"Frustration with aspects of the Palestinian leadership, preoccupations in Iraq (news - web sites), presidential elections and security concerns for US citizens may risk USA disengagement at the highest levels from the peace process when it is most likely to start collapsing," it said.
"There is now a medium to high probability that there will be a lack of effective international engagement on the Middle East peace process due to other international priorities in 2004."
"The EU, by contrast remains focused, but has limited influence," it said.
Without action soon, Israeli settlement expansion and the construction of a separation barrier in the West Bank would make a viable two-state solution "almost impossible," said the report.
"Continuing failure to make progress towards a political solution" leading to the "continued construction of the separation barrier on Palestinian land, and gradual disappearance of the prospects for creating a viable Palestinian state" is the most likely scenario, it said.
"The Palestinian state which would be left if Israel controlled all access and/or permanently withdrew behind the current and planned route of the separation barrier would not be viable or stable," the report said.
It might instead prompt a majority of Palestinians to drop support for a two-state solution and "instead back a single bi-national state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean."
"Palestinians would outnumber Jewish Israelis in such a state within the next decade," it added.
The DFID report said this will be "the logical consequence of indefinite occupation by Israel".
SOURCE
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