RAMALLAH: Sixty years ago, Arab leaders rejected the partition of Palestine and with it a United Nations proposal of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Today, despite two decades of growing global consensus for a new “two-state solution”, Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories and in camps abroad look on their Jewish neighbours’ celebrations of 60 years of independence with a sense that their chances of their own state are disappearing.On offer is less than 22 per cent of British-ruled Palestine about half what the UN deal offered them 60 years ago.

“Israel’s maximum offers don’t meet our minimum demands, so we are debating our options in case the talks with Israel fail,” a senior Palestinian official said.

Nearly two decades after their late leader Yasser Arafat gave up on hopes of ruling all of Palestine, many Palestinians question whether they will ever get an acceptable deal on a state, even after Israel’s main ally, US President George W. Bush, pushed both sides to resume negotiations six months ago.

“There is a debate now,” said analyst Mehdi Abdel-Hadi.

“They are saying a two-state solution is a mission impossible.”

One option getting an airing, noted Abdel-Hadi, a prominent Palestinian scholar of national affairs, was to push for a “one-state solution”, absorbing Jews and Arabs into a single country something few Israelis are ready to countenance: “They’re saying ... let’s talk about one secular, binational state,” he said of the debate going on among Palestinians.

Though it remains strictly in the realm of hypothetical tactics, it is a proposal that even chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurie has brandished in talks with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “I told Livni and Rice in January when they offered us less land for a state: ‘In that case a two-state solution won’t work. Let’s have just one’,” Qurie said.

For all Bush’s declared optimism, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas left the White House last month disenchanted.

Another Palestinian official said: “The debate is over whether we accept the division of the West Bank with Israel, or leave the status quo the apartheid regime under Israel.”

That South African reference has also been echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He is telling Israeli opponents of a Palestinian state that the alternative is one state where, if it remained democratic, Jews would in time face Arab majority rule.“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights,” Olmert said last year.

“As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

Among 10.8 million people in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, there are 5.5 million Jews. But the Arab birth rate is higher.

Disenchanted with peace efforts, some academics and local leaders of Abbas’ Fatah faction have even suggested returning to the situation up to 1967, when the West Bank was ruled by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt. Some Israelis also endorse that suggestion.

But both Jordan and Egypt have flatly rejected the idea.

Palestinians see key obstacles in statehood talks relaunched at Annapolis in November, as Israeli claims to West Bank land, including East Jerusalem, and the refusal to accept a right of refugees to return: “Obviously, we are being offered less land, no return of refugees, and no Jerusalem,” the official said.

Israel complains of continued attacks, notably from Hamas Islamists who reject Arafat’s recognition of the Jewish state.

Hamas won a parliamentary election in 2006 and a year ago seized the Gaza Strip, leaving Abbas to control the West Bank.

RICE WARNING: “I don’t believe we’ll have a comprehensive deal this year, but we may reach agreement on two important issues: borders and a settlement freeze,” a senior Palestinian negotiator said.

Also dampening hopes, Olmert faces a corruption probe that could lead to a disruptive realignment in Israeli politics.

Rice cautioned this month that time may be running out for a Palestinian state: “I do believe the window for the two-state solution will not be forever open and in fact, I think you could argue that it has gotten narrower and narrower,” she said.

“It’s far too early to start any sense of despair about the end of the year,” Rice added.

With little viable alternative to the present talks in the short term, Israeli and Palestinian analysts paint a scenario of rising chaos in Palestinian areas and a shift towards more radical positions on both sides if the negotiations collapse.

Abbas says a failure by Israel to understand Palestinians’ need for independence could lead to an explosion in violence.

“A Palestinian state will bring security for Israel, independence for the Palestinians, and stability for the region, otherwise, tensions will flare and things could blow up,” he said during his trip to Washington last month.

Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said a desire to preserve the Jewish character of the state, 60 years after it was founded as a haven after the Holocaust, gave Israelis a strong motivation for a two-state solution. But he said a deal seemed remote.—Reuters