The 50-Something-Or-Other State?

The main American in Jerusalem wants a state:

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, unveiled a government program on Tuesday to build the apparatus of a Palestinian state within two years, regardless of progress in the stalled peace negotiations with Israel.

...The United States consul general in Jerusalem expressed approval for the plan...Jacob Walles, the American consul general, spoke of the plan in an interview here on Monday, before Mr. Fayyad’s announcement. He said that it was the first time he had seen such a “concrete plan” and that the Palestinians were working in a practical way toward their goal.



Mr. Walles added that under the premiership of Mr. Fayyad there had been “a lot of progress in the West Bank” in economic, security and other spheres.

Yuval Steinitz, the finance minister of the conservative Likud Party, called Mr. Fayyad’s ideas “disappointing...There is no place for unilateralism, no place for threats, and of course, there will be no Palestinian state at all, if any, without ensuring the state of Israel’s security.”

Daniel Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, said that “artificial dates and arbitrary deadlines never worked in the past, but caused only damage and would not work now.”...

So, one side can do whatever it wants outside the formal framework of negotiations.