There has been no functioning Middle East peace process for years now. Israel has instead pursued a strategy of unilateral action to redraw borders, annex Palestinian land, and impose its own version of a "solution" to the conflict.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was moving one-sidedly in the occupied territories -- "disengaging" from Gaza, expanding settlements and the separation wall, and preparing to annex huge swaths of Palestinian land. The moves are all aimed at consolidating an expanded Israeli state, including all major West Bank settlement blocs as part of Israel, and walling off the Palestinians into a set of divided cantons.
That strategy, based on separating Israel from the Palestinians physically and economically, and negotiating only with Washington, remains unchanged since Sharon's stroke.
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