Today, despite two decades of growing global consensus for a new “two-state solution,” Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories and in camps abroad look on their Jewish neighbors’ celebrations of 60 years of independence with a sense that their chances of their own state are disappearing.

On offer is less than 22 percent of British-ruled Palestine — about half what the U.N. deal offered them 60 years ago.

“Israel’s maximum offers don’t meet our minimum demands, so we are debating our options in case the talks with Israel fail,” a senior Palestinian official told Reuters.

Nearly two decades after their late leader Yasser Arafat gave up on hopes of ruling all of Palestine, many Palestinians question whether they will ever get an acceptable deal on a state, even after Israel’s main ally, U.S. President George W. Bush, pushed both sides to resume negotiations six months ago.

“There is a debate now,” said analyst Mehdi Abdel-Hadi. “They are saying a two-state solution is a mission impossible.”

One option getting an airing, noted Abdel-Hadi, a prominent Palestinian scholar of national affairs, was to push for a “one-state solution,” absorbing Jews and Arabs into a single country — something few Israelis are ready to countenance.

“They’re saying ... let’s talk about one secular, bi-national state,” he said of the debate going on among Palestinians.

Though it remains strictly in the realm of hypothetical tactics, it is a proposal that even chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurie has brandished in talks with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “I told Livni and Rice in January when they offered us less land for a state: ‘In that case a two-state solution won’t work. Let’s have just one’,” Qurie said.

Bush, who hopes to see a deal on a Palestinian state before he leaves office in January, visits Israel this week to mark the 60th anniversary of its founding — an event Palestinians call the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, when Jewish attacks and war between Israel and Arab states forced 700,000 of them from their homes.

For all Bush’s declared optimism, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas left the White House last month disenchanted.

Another Palestinian official said: “The debate is over whether we accept the division of the West Bank with Israel, or leave the status quo — the apartheid regime under Israel.”

That South African reference has also been echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He is telling Israeli opponents of a Palestinian state that the alternative is one state where, if it remained democratic, Jews would in time face Arab majority rule.

“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights,” Olmert said last year.

“As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

Among 10.8 million people in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, there are 5.5 million Jews. But the Arab birth rate is higher.

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