Palestine in 2019.

Byline: Rustam Shah Mohmand

For the world's most protracted conflict that has spanned over more than seven decades, year 2019 does not hold any promise of a fraction of breakthrough. To add to the despair and despondency of millions of Palestinians, the regional Arab countries have acquiesced in the occupation of their (Palestinian) land by Israel. For now, few nurture any hope of seeing in their lifetime the emergence of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel. The goal of undoing the state of Israel has long been abandoned.

Internal divisions, lack of existence of any durable institutions, and competition for hegemony with Iran have come in the way of formulating a robust stance against Israeli expansionism.

Both intra-Arab and Arab-Iranian disputes or tensions have been orchestrated by external engineering in order to achieve the twin objectives of huge Western arms sales to Arab countries and to enable the state of Israel to continue its march to progress and prosperity while annexing more Arab lands for making new settlements.

In any peace negotiations, Israel would speak from a position of strength. As long as the Arab Middle East is in disarray, the Zionist state will not make any concession nor cede any territory. It would not renounce its claim to continue its settlements programme in order to restrict the size and capacity of any future Palestinian state.

The Palestinian cause for statehood has suffered because neither the regional Arab countries nor the big powers and the UN were able to put a genuine political and economic pressure on Israel to show flexibility and allow the two-state solution to become a reality.

What to speak of moving towards some reconciliation that could pave the way for a two-state solution, the situation is indeed deteriorating.

Israel has carried out air strikes on Syria since 2013 taking advantage of the pervasive state of insecurity. Arms convoys, government and Hezbollah installations and individuals who pose a threat have been targeted with impunity.

In a recent statement, Avigdor Lieberman who announced his resignation as Israel's defence minister in November 2018 has asserted that his country is in a position to fight on both the northern and southern sectors. In other words, while Israel can engage the Syrian and Hezbollah fighters in the north, it can also deal with Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip.

If Israeli-Syrian confrontation continues to result in a conflict, Hezbollah would almost...