The Middle East, riven by wars, religious intolerance, ethnic rivalries, fundamentalist ignorance, suicide bombers, and political instability, all mixed with precious oil, big money, Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is surely the planet’s most volatile neighborhood.

Central to this tinderbox, and to the prospects for a better world, is the Israeli-Palestinian rivalry.

It’s a rivalry too important to entrust to Israel and Palestine alone, for its tentacles reach around the world and into all our homes in the form of oil crises, U.S.

wars, and nuclear weapons threats.

Israel’s weeklong attack on the Gaza Strip in November, and the responding rocket fire from Hamas, claimed the lives of some 160 Palestinians and fi ve Israelis.

Israel’s attack was sparked by Hamas’s rocket fi re during at least the preceding month, which was in turn sparked by Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which was in turn sparked by Hamas’s smuggling of military equipment, which ... but you get the idea. It’s a can of worms.

I do not criticize Israel’s attack. Any nation has the right to defend itself when hundreds of rockets are rained upon its territory.

But I’m dismayed by the longer-term outlook. Israel and Palestine, with the apparent acquiescence of the United States, are on an unsustainable path of conflict, implying that the Mideast will remain a powder keg for the foreseeable future.

Palestine is now dividedinto the small Gaza Strip in the south, ruled by the Hamas fundamentalist religious organization, and the West Bank bordering on Jordan, ruled by the Palestinian National Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas took a big step, and a big risk, for peace in early November when he unilaterally off ered to drop the claims of many Palestinians for the “right of return” to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Abbas, whose birthplace, Safed, is now a town in northern Israel, is one of those refugees. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted coolly, mistrustfully, to Abbas’s remarks. He could and should have off ered, in return, a halt in the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Such expansions are illegal according to the United Nations and the 1993 Oslo Accords, which Israel signed. Yet 220 such settlements are scattered all over the West Bank; they are home to over 500,000 Israeli settlers. Some 100 of these settlements are illegal even under Israeli law, but they are nevertheless provided with infrastructure and services by Israeli authorities. How can Netanyahu maintaina straight face as he asks Abbas to negotiate “without preconditions” when Palestine is so invaded by these expanding settlements?

Abbas’s peaceful move was surely infl uenced by his plans to ask the United Nations for nonmember observer status for Palestine. That request was overwhelmingly approved by 138 nations, with only the U.S., Israel, Canada, Czech Republic, Panama, and four Pacifi c island nations opposing. There were 45 abstentions. About half of Europe, including France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, and Sweden, voted“yes.” In other words, the U.S. and Israel were nearly isolated internationally.

This conflict will continue corroding the entire world until Israel decides it wants a two-state solution that honors both sides. I, like most Americans, dearly want Israel to prosper. But Israel is doomed to defeat by isolation, demographics, war, and sheer exhaustion if it continues its present path. I am pro-Israel. I am also pro-Palestine. We owe it to Israel, to ourselves, and to the world to intervene by pressuring our good friend into doing what is in its own interest, namely to move toward a two-state solution.

A major force pushing the United States toward Mideast failure has been the American Israel Public Aff airs Committee. There’s now a welcome alternative to this hawkish organization. It’s called “J Street.” As “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” they support rational policy positions toward a prosperous Mideast for all, including Israelis and Palestinians. J Street is currently pressing the Obama administration and Congress to accept the United Nations vote gracefully, and to move toward stopping settlement expansion and towardnegotiations on a two-state solution with borders based on the pre-1967 lines (the 1949 Armistice “Green Line”) with agreed territorial swaps and with both the Israeli and Palestinian capitals in Jerusalem.

It seems clear that Israel, under the Netanyahu government, is not moving, and doesn’t want to move, in this direction. It should be a top priority of President Obama to work with other interested nations on all sides to persuade them to change paths.

ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 12/09/2012