November 1979 that "we can live with them and they can live with us. I would prefer they were Israeli citizens, but I am not afraid of a bi-national state. In any case, it will always be a Jewish state with a large Arab minority." The construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier after 2003, strongly opposed by the ideological part of the West Bank Jewish settler movement, was widely deemed as an attempt to not only curtail Palestinian suicide bombings but also to define where a future international border might run and eventually extricate Israel from most of the West Bank. This impression was reinforced by the Israel's unilateral disengagement plan implemented by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank in 2005, which was then widely regarded as the death knell of the trans-security barrier settlements. However, since such time, these settlements have continued to grow considerably, not as a result of Israeli government policy (which often opposed such growth) but rather as a result of the organizational and economic abilities of the powerful and highly motivated settlement movement. The majority of Israelis do not cross the security barrier into Palestinian-populated areas, and know little or nothing of these developments on the ground which could have a fateful influence on the future of Israel. Among Palestinians, Israel's opposition to a bi-national state led to another change of position which evolved gradually from the late 1970s onwards. The PLO retained its original option of a single secular bi-national state west of Jordan, but began to take the position that it was prepared to accept a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza in land from which Israel had withdrawn under Security Council Resolution 242. Israeli settlements would need to be dismantled and Palestinian refugees allowed to return (to Israel as well as the new Palestine). This new position, formally adopted in December 1988, was overwhelmingly rejected by Israeli public and the main political parties but was later used as the basis of peace discussions in the 1990s. Various Israelis and Palestinians who oppose a one-state solution have come to believe that it may come to pass. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert argued, in a 2007 interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, that without a two-state agreement Israel would face "a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights" in which case "Israel [would be]