Alan Dershowitz urges that the Palestine-Israel conflict be left to the parties themselves to resolve through negotiation and that the United Nations be left out of the process (“Obama, slow your roll on Mideast peace process’’). Sadly, this amounts to calling on the United States, and the world, to allow Israel to continue its piecemeal acquisition of the West Bank.

First, Dershowitz specifies that the negotiations be conducted without preconditions. When the issue is land, and the more powerful party continues to expand onto the disputed areas, unilaterally deciding the outcome of the negotiation as it negotiates, then a status quo precondition is a no-brainer. Otherwise, there will soon be nothing left over which to negotiate.

More important, one party enjoys a first-world economy, one of the world’s most powerful militaries, the political cover of the world’s one remaining superpower, and complete control over the borders, airspace, ports, bandwidth, and tax revenues of its negotiating partner. The other is an immiserated, occupied nation with no army, navy, or air force and virtually no leverage of any sort.

On what planet can such wildly incommensurate entities be said to “negotiate’’ in any meaningful way? What the Palestinians have to give in a negotiation — land — Israel has simply been taking, because it can. It is precisely in such situations — when one party has all the power and every advantage — that we seek justice through the offices of third parties, such as the UN or the International Court of Justice, the very recourse that Dershowitz wants to rule out.

But without the intecession of intermediaries, Israel will continue to negotiate via walls, armies, and bulldozers, and the diminishing chances for a two-state solution will disappear altogether.

Richard M. Nasser

Brookline