US Ambassador Douglas Kmiec (The Sunday Times, January 3) said that in the new year the US needs to address the "humanitarian injustice that persists in the Middle East so long as a two-state solution (in Palestine-Israel) is needlessly delayed or equivocated".

Mr Kmiec is right in saying this, but it needs to be pointed out to him that it is the US itself which is equivocating over this matter and causing a needless delay to a two-state solution for Palestine-Israel. For instance, US President Barack Obama had originally insisted on a complete freeze on new Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu refused this demand and said that he would merely restrain building (the restraint was to exclude Jerusalem).

For this he was congratulated by Mr Obama's Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, for his (Netanyahu's) unprecedented offer to build at a slower rate than before! What better proof is needed that as long as America complies with Israeli wishes the Israelis will only carry on getting what they want and delay the two-state solution indefinitely, grabbing more Palestinian territory both in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, expelling more of its Palestinian inhabitants until there will be no land left for the Palestinians to acquire an independent, contiguous and viable state of their own?

The present 'Bantustanisation' of the Palestinians will then be irreversible, reducing their territory to disconnected and unviable cantons, which is what Mr Netanyahu and his government really want.

Only the US holds the key to the solution to this problem. Mr Obama and his administration must find the political will and courage to lean heavily on Israel to force it to stop all settlement expansion permanently and enter into serious negotiations with the Palestinians so that they acquire, as soon as possible, their own independent state which must be both contiguous and viable.

One way that this can be done is for the US to stop the annual $3.5 billion that it makes available to Israel to continue to build up its al- ready oversized armed forces. Only then will the Israelis realise that Mr Obama really means business and is not engaging in empty rhetoric. Only then will he gain crediblity among the Palestinians that he is genuinely willing and able to ensure that they acquire a true state of their own. He must act now before it is too late.