Unless Israel withdraws, it will become an apartheid state.

Demography is not destiny. When the argument that Palestinians would eventually vastly outnumber Israelis entered the debate during the Oslo years, the expectation was that, in the absence of peace, Israel would become a binational, non-Jewish state or have to abandon democracy. 

This notion has been proved wrong by the unexpected twists and turns of history. Despite dire predictions, Palestinians by and large are not asking for Israeli nationality — the sophisticated intellectualism of their Westernised, largely London-based elites has so far failed to awaken their political imagination. They do not want to be on a par with Israelis in the same state — they want a state of their own, and that has not changed. Besides, numbers are not squaring well with the claim: by withdrawing from Gaza with its high population growth out of the equation, Israel has gained 20 years, if not more, even assuming that growth remains the same.

This is the last chance to make peace.

Show me your crystal ball. How many times has this silly proposition been voiced since 2000? It is not even clear there has ever been a genuine chance of peace since the late Yasser Arafat rejected the Clinton parameters dealing with settlements, Jerusalem and refugees in late 2000, but the point, surely, is that it will take years for the dust to settle. 

Why should it be  assumed that the new regional order which will emerge from the Arab revolts and Iran's nuclear quest is going to preclude peace for ever? And why should Israel make any concessions until that new order has emerged?

Peace is the only way forward.

Is this a Miss World cliché? In fact, conflict management has been very successful for the last 40 years. If Cyprus can accede to the European Union while its ethnic conflict is managed but unresolved, why does the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not have at least the same chances to be kept within reasonable levels of nuisance until a new opportunity arises? The US Secretary of State John Kerry may like to shuttle back and forth — and no doubt cheerleading European politicians will see a redeeming value in the new diplomatic attempts to bring peace to the lands of the Bible. Unless the above assumptions are first discarded, however, this round will be another futile distraction from the real challenges of the region.