Erekat floats the one-state solution

"Successive Israeli governments have destroyed any chance of reaching a two-state solution," Erekat said. "The Palestinian Authority must start searching for other options. A Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital would be meaningless. The Palestinian people haven't excluded other options, including the option of a one-state solution."

This is a negotiating tactic, and hardly a new one. Prominent Palestinians (and other world leaders, including Muammar Qadhafi) have raised the one-state solution in the past as a way of focusing the Israeli mind. (Most Israelis find a one-state solution totally unacceptable.)

So I'm not surprised that Erekat raised the idea at this juncture, with peace talks basically dead.

Nonetheless: Benjamin Netanyahu should probably pay attention this time. Erekat isn't the first prominent figure to talk about one state. Jordan's King Abdullah, in an interview last month, said the possibility of a two-state solution would disappear at the end of 2010. There's a growing sense that Israel only has a limited window of opportunity left to sign a two-state deal.

A majority of Palestinians still support two states, but that won't last forever -- not with the PA weakened, Netanyahu intransigent, and Obama increasingly viewed as just another biased American president. If the two-state "peace process" doesn't start yielding results, soon, Palestinians might well decide it's not worth pursuing.