The Bush administration's evident intent is to encourage Palestinians to lay down arms by holding out statehood as a reward.
And we judged it foreign in language and culture — and worse, overpopulated — so New Mexico-style Americanization leading to statehood was out of the question.
Finally, even if statehood is out of reach the Palestinians could win a booby prize if the UN General Assembly upgrades their status to that of a "non-member state".
Only in 2012 did statehood advocates finally come out on top: in a ballot with two separate questions, a majority voted both in favour of changing the island's status and for becoming a state if a change did occur.
Mr. Cramer's unnatural standard for Israel implies that the country's failure to create a utopia, however high its aspirations, delegitimizes its existence -- as if the year were still 1947, and the jury were still out on statehood.
Is it not now time for western powers to leave Iraq and the wider region alone and allow the process of nation-building and statehood to work itself out in its own cultural and political context?
The runway of Gaza International Airport was blocked with piles of broken concrete today after Israeli tanks and bulldozers rumbled into the area overnight, digging trenches in the tarmac and ensuring that the airport, long a symbol of Palestinian aspirations for statehood, would be out of commission for some time to come.
The vast majority of the people clearly value some form of permanent association with the United States, although Puerto Ricans fiercely embrace their language and Hispanic-American culture; some have even pointed out that, under statehood, Puerto Rico could no longer field its own teams for the Olympic Games.
"I think it's in November you're having a referendum and I expect the people of Puerto Rico will decide that they want to become a state and I can tell you that I will work with [Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño] to make sure that if that vote comes out in favor of statehood, that we will go through the process in Washington to provide statehood to Puerto Rico".
But anyone who sets out to demonstrate that Russian statehood and Russian religion are expanding in sync can cite plenty of other pieces of prima facie evidence.
