As the deadline for the US-sponsored talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority passed yesterday, US Secretary of State John Kerry was quoted using the “apartheid” word in relation to Israel for the first time.

Kerry warned that this was the future for Israel unless a way could be found to move toward a two-state solution. But the truth is that Kerry has missed the boat. 

A two-state solution is dead in the water. Palestinians in Israel and the occupied West Bank already live in an apartheid-based system. 

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu used the unity deal between the Hamas government in Gaza and the PA, reached last week, as the excuse he was looking for to torpedo the deadlocked talks. During their nine months, no fewer than 14,000 Israeli settler homes were approved in occupied Palestinian territory. 

It is now 20 years since Israel and the PLO reached a deal in Cairo to implement the Oslo Accords. 

As a child I remember watching Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands on the White House lawn on September 13 1993. 

That infamous handshake was cementing the Oslo Accords, a deal that would set the course for all future negotiations. Negotiations that have, if anything, led Palestinians further away from their human rights and self-determination.

Looking back today, it is clear this document was not worth the paper it was written on. Israel’s much- vaunted “withdrawal” from Gaza eventually became a brutal and ongoing seven-year siege resulting in a grave humanitarian crisis. Settlement- building continues in the West Bank as does the violation of Palestinian rights across the entire region.

The West Bank was divided into three areas of control — Area A Palestinian control, Area B joint control and Area C Israeli control. Essentially this led to the bantustanisation of the West Bank, with pockets of Palestinian “control” surrounded by settlements and the Israeli army. 

The PA control is nominal, and it was recently reported to me by a UN employee that Israel has the ability to lock down the West Bank into six tightly secured areas should a third intifada (uprising) develop. 

For the Palestinians who live inside the borders of Israel, the situation has not changed and they continue to live as second-class citizens.

The Oslo Accords also coined the concept of “final-status issues,” in other words issues that would be dealt with at a later phase of the peace process because they were too contentious to be dealt with initially. These issues are borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and settlements. 

Each and every final-status issue is addressed in international law — settlement building is illegal, east Jerusalem should belong to a future Palestinian state, Palestinians should have a right to self-determination including control of their own borders, and Palestinian refugees should be given the right to return. 

The simple matter of fact is that the peace process ignores that Israel is a violator of international law and, more importantly, that it is the occupier and aggressor in this situation. Rather than deal with these violations up front, the Oslo tract relegated them to a later date. 

Asking Palestinians to support such a peace process, particularly one that is sponsored by their colonists’ biggest ally, the US, and ignores international law is preposterous. 

I heard a suitable analogy recently with regards to asking Palestinians to take part in the peace process — it’s like asking an assault victim to talk about the assault while still being assaulted. 

Palestinians are expected to come to the negotiating table while their  “partner” in the talks approves a record number of settlements and commit acts of violence that contravene international law, such as the recent shooting of an unarmed
Palestinian judge at the Jordanian border.

Palestinians gave up hope on peace negotiations a long time ago. The framework for peace put forward offers neither justice nor equality. It simply does not deal with the core issues — settler-colonialism and zionism.  

What is astounding is that the “international community” continues to push for an Oslo-type peace more than two decades on from that handshake with a worsening situation and no end in sight. 

If we are to achieve a just and lasting peace a new formula has to be put forward. This new formula would adopt an appropriate discourse, using phrases such as apartheid, settler-colonialism and zionism. 

Most importantly, there should be recognition that the two-state solution is a dead solution and discussions should move towards varying models of a one-state solution. 

This discussion would focus on the good old formula of “one person, one vote” regardless of skin colour, gender, religion or national identifications. It’s been done before, it can be done here. 

Yara Hawari is a British Palestinian PhD candidate at the University of Exeter. She lives and works in east Jerusalem.