Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council and top military negotiator with the Palestinians under Ehud Barak, used to believe in the two state solution.

So did I.

But now, according to the Jerusalem Post Click here for "Eiland: Two-state solution 'untenable'", he has joined the growing ranks of Israelis who have given up on the concept.

"Israel and the Palestinians do not truly desire the conventional two-state solution, and the Arab world - especially Jordan and Egypt - does not truly support it either," he wrote in a paper, which he presented at a Washington Institute for Near East Policy conference this weekend.

"Contrary to other disputes - where the devil is usually in the details - here the devil is more in the concept."

He assessed that the maximum that Israel is politically able to give is less than the Palestinians are politically able to accept, asking, "What is the basis for believing that now we can resume the same negotiations and be more successful?"

I, too, have given up on that concept, because like Eiland I think that the painful truth is that the maximum Israel can offer - like at Taba in 2001 - is nowhere near the minimum the Palestinians can or will accept for as long as they don't abandon the "right of return" or, like Arafat, refuse to accept that any agreement is final.