Settlement tightens the noose on Jerusalem

The document that Abu Mazen's department has been drafting for the past month calls the settlements "colonies" and warns, "If the international community continues to remain unwilling to reign in Israeli colony construction and expansion, irreversible `facts on the ground' and the de facto apartheid system, such facts create will force Palestinian policy makers to re-evaluate the plausibility of a two-state solution."

According to the document, Israeli construction in the West Bank in general and in the area of Jerusalem in particular would leave the Palestinians with chances for a "state" in name only, that would more closely resemble an Indian reservation in the United States, with limited access to water and land. This is the opinion of the document's authors - a team of legal scholars, academics and geographers who have been working in the framework of what is called the "Jerusalem task force" for the past two years. [read more]