Ishaan Tharoor writes: In Washington, a generation of diplomats, politicos and wonks see the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians entirely in the context of the “two-state solution,” a scenario in which an independent Palestinian state emerges alongside Israel. It has been an article of faith for successive American administrations, even the current one. But on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories, the two-state solution is a mirage.

The right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu includes a number of politicians who emphatically reject the notion of an independent Palestine. Israeli settlers continue to expand across the West Bank, no matter the timid censure of the international community. And Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas finds himself tethered to a process that has no real future, while his support dwindles among the Palestinian public.

“We are not in the time to talk about solutions,” said Issa Amro, a leading Palestinian activist who spoke to Today’s WorldView while on a visit to Washington this week. “We are in the time to protect ourselves from settlements, from settler violence, from attacks on our cities and villages.”

Amro, 38, has risen to prominence as a nonviolent dissident. Amro’s organization, Youth Against Settlements, stages civil disobedience actions and monitors human rights violations in the West Bank. He comes from a generation of Palestinians who have grown up in the era that followed the 1993 Oslo peace accords and yet see no end to the military occupation that has defined their lives. That’s perhaps especially true in the West Bank city of Hebron, Amro’s hometown, where civic life is dominated by Israeli settlements.

“It’s every day — house demolitions, land confiscation, building more and more settlements,” he said. “If you tell a Palestinian, ‘two-state’ or ‘one-state,’ he’ll say ‘What are you talking about? They are burning my house, they are arresting my children.'” [Continue reading…]