The New York Sun reports that PLO representatives are openly threatening to abandon a two-state solution in response to the collapse of Sharon’s coalition government.

Though Yasser Arafat said he accepted Israel’s right to exist in the 1993 Oslo Agreement, skeptics have always said he was seeking a two-stage solution that would eventually eliminate Israel.

They’ve pointed to PLO maps, logos, and stationery that show all of Israel as “Palestine,” and to statements by Mr. Arafat and other PLO officials to Arab audiences.

But now, both a key Palestinian Arab negotiator and an important Israeli military official are saying that the PLO may formally abandon its support for a two-state solution and try instead for a Palestinian Arab state that would stretch from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to — and perhaps past — the Jordan River.

The state known as Israel would cease to exist.

“We have basically concluded that if the colonization continues at this pace, we are going to have to start questioning whether a two-state solution is even plausible,” a legal adviser to the PLO, Diana Buttu, told the newsletter Bitter Lemons.

“That is not to say that we are not committed to the two-state solution; the PLO has been committed to that since 1988. But given the facts on the ground, given the way that things have changed, one cannot unscramble an egg.”

At last they’re starting to be honest. If the PLO really wanted a two-state solution they had many opportunities to get it; their true priorities have been clear for a long time.