Could Europe Create A Palestinian State?

Yesterday Israel rejected a proposal by the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana that the international community pick a date for the creation of a Palestinian State, and that if by that day negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians haven't led to a state, the global community just go ahead and recognize Palestine as an independent country.

It's interesting since this is the first I've heard of the EU proposal. But Solana seems to be publicly expressing frustration over endless negotiations that seem to be going nowhere. The whole process of bringing the Israeli and Palestinian sides together to negotiate a homeland for the Palestinians began back in 1991. The two sides were close to an agreement in 2000 during the waning days of the Clinton administration, but have basically made no progress whatsoever in the decade since.

Solana's idea was for the EU to set a deadline for the two sides to negotiate a settlement. If by then they haven't reached a deal, the European Union would (in Solana's plan with the United Nations) go ahead and recognize Palestine as a country and push for their full membership in the UN.

It's a pretty simple solution to what seems like an unsolvable problem, it also puts much of the responsibility on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, since they could just stall the negotiations and still get their state in the end. Of course, maybe there's not much to negotiate - the borders of a Palestinian state are pretty clear, the stumbling block has been the Israeli settlements woven through the West Bank, settlements that under international law are illegal anyway, so one questions what there is to negotiate about them.

Speaking of the settlements, they remain a sore point between the Obama administration and Netanyahu's government - Obama wants all construction of settlements stopped, while Netanyahu has been pushing for “natural growth.” His argument boils down to this: if a family in a settlement has six kids, they should be allowed to expand the settlement to accommodate the larger population. But a new report throws a lot of cold water on that idea. Research from Israel's own Central Bureau of Statistics shows that in 2007, 36% of the growth in the settlements came from people moving into them from other parts of Israel or from abroad - that's almost 4 in 10 people, meaning there would be a lot less growth if immigration to the settlements was halted, and thus a lot less need for “natural growth.”