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The conflict in the Middle East needs to be solved for the same reasons. It is necessary to reach a two-states solution, built on international law, for sustainable peace and development, and it can only be achieved through joint efforts by the international community.

Like most Americans, I hope and wish is that there is a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict. Unfortunately, there are extremists on both sides who oppose a peaceful resolution and instead choose violence.

In the Middle East, it is clear that peace will never be reached without solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution must be found and enforced.

I believe that in the long run, separation between Israel and the Palestinians is the best solution for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Needless to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is ahead.

I've often made critical comments about settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and in east Jerusalem, and my position hasn't changed. At the same time, it's equally important to me that the two sides, both Israel and the Palestinians, work towards a durable peace settlement: that's to say a viable two-state solution.

My idea for peace in the Middle East is to go back to the 1966 line, but to build even more houses for the Palestinians, who are a poor people.

Middle Eastern wars rarely end with outright victory and permanent stability, so the word 'settlement' may promise too much. At best, for many years, it may simply mean stable ceasefire lines, reduced bloodshed, fewer refugees, and less terrorism.

Most Israelis have a sense, 'We just don't want to live in the Middle East anymore. We don't want it to be the Middle East. Were going to just build a wall or operate unilaterally' - not try to even use force as used to be the case to convince Arabs to accept Israel by convincing them that Israel is here to stay and then negotiating.

You can set up whatever negotiations or structure you want, but until the Palestinians are willing to accept the fact, as the majority of Israelis do, that there should be two states between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, we won't have peace.