So does either side actually want a two-state solution?

... As we look at the continuing impasse, and the reality that there has been less than a month of tentative negotiation in the three years since this government came to office, Israeli officials have been telling anyone who’ll listen that the Palestinians are wholly to blame for the absence of peace talks. The Prime Minister, they say, has been waiting for Mahmoud Abbas to join him for peace talks; instead the Palestinian Authority President has tried to circumvent negotiations and unilaterally force the issue at the UN.

For their part the Palestinians claim that negotiating with Netanyahu would be a waste of time. And it is the case that, in a fashion familiar to observers of the Prime Minister’s first term in office, he has rhetorically supported moderate positions while giving a nod and a wink to hardliners in his government and the settlement movement. For instance following his announcement of the ten-month settlement freeze in 2009, he quickly moved to reassure settler leaders that this was a one-off event and that building would resume in the West Bank once the period of the moratorium had elapsed....

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