Congratulations, Hamas.

[The Magistrate]

98. I Expect Where We Have Points Of Agreement, Sir, Would Be This

That the situation is bad, and is not getting better any time soon, if at all.

In terms of Israel's domestic politics, I expect you are right; Netanyahu has probably improved his electoral prospects, and secured a fresh lease on life for his party. I view this as a poisonous development, however, and one which damages the long term prospect for security of the state of Israel, let alone the prospects for a just peace. I agree that the continued expansion of settlements on the territory occupied in '67, which are without doubt illegal, is on course to make a two-state solution wholly impractical, and further, I am convinced it is the policy of the Israeli right to do this, to make it impossible to establish a viable state of Arab Palestine on any portion of the territory allotted for this purpose by the United Nations in the Partition to which Israel itself traces its legitimate establishment. This I consider a very great wrong, and you will know I say this as a person who supports Israel, and considers the Zionist project which worked to create it, and its establishment as a Jewish state, to be no crime but a wholly legitimate act of national self-renewal by a people who really had little choice but to do something of the sort.