The United States has lost any pretense of being an honest broker. Were it to intervene in Palestine this would be seen only as a more direct participation in Israel's open ethnic cleansing, and, barring that, outright genocide.
"If the US moves in decisively, the Israelis will play along"
Interesting theory.
Really, what's more likely in the proposed scenario? That US forces in what's supposedly a sovereign Palestine chase the Israeli settlers out of the West Bank? Or would US forces become the enforcer for a resumption of the slow-motion ethnic cleansing that was already taking place?
There's no fixing this. Best US can do (under the bipartisan "political reality" in Washington) is when Israel is done exterminating and/or expelling the Gazans, find a scapegoat for the domestic press. Probably Netanyahu personally. Then help bribe and/or threated the ICJ judges, to save the rest of the Israeli political establishment - who are all in on this in 9/11-hysteria style. Then USN can go back to doing FONOP's in a part of the world that's less hazardous to sail thru. Finally, hope the allies that stick with the US and Israel after all this (eg Brits, Germans) will pretend nothing actually happened. But even that's optimistic.
Here's the flipped take
"If Israel moves decisively, the US will play along"
Meaning, for the US, having a proper war against Yemen and Lebanon
---
Thanks for having the integrity to discuss the issue, in any case. More than we can say about much of the "PMC" class nowadays
Thank you for the article. Regarding your Biden poll however, why frame the question as “have you soured on Biden”. Not clear (ie i might have soured on him but still vote for him) and also brings bias into the question.
Hey Anusar, I commend you on a valiant attempt to find a pragmatic solution to the latest Middle East mess. But what you propose will not work. It will not even get off the ground. Such a proposal from the Biden administration would guarantee the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
After the post-9/11 twenty-year catastrophe of failed American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American people will not stand for American servicemen and women being put in harm’s way again to separate warring parties in the Middle East. Especially, as for now, a majority of Americans are still more sympathetic to Israel and would prefer to see Israel finish the job of defeating Hamas on its own, regardless of the growing toll of Palestinian civilian casualties.
I don’t believe the Israel-Palestinian conflict can be resolved along the lines you lay out. It is unresolvable for now and for the foreseeable future. While I once supported the two-state solution, I no longer consider it a realistic option. And at this point neither the Israelis, nor the Palestinians, trust the competence or commitment of the United States, after twenty years of chasing magical dancing democracy unicorns throughout the Middle East, not to make a complete mess of any solution we might try to impose. And then, when the costs of American intervention prove too high in blood and treasure, wash our hands and walk away as we did in Afghanistan.
Shaped by their tragic histories culminating in the Holocaust and the Nakba, neither Israelis nor Palestinians believe in the promises or durability of the American-led Liberal World Order. Both Israelis and Palestinians believe in and act on Thucydides’s maxim that in geopolitics “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
In the larger picture, when it comes to Israel and the Jews it’s just not possible for most observers and analysts to be fair and balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends and foes of Israel, living in alternate realities, committed with passionate intensity to uncompromising positions, engage in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably devolve into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage. And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely on the Left, is driven by anti-Semitism, as well as anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism. Just look at the pro-Hamas demonstrations and riots on college campuses and cities throughout America and Europe. (“NYPD, KKK, IDF you’re all the same!”) Walter Russell Mead called this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the “Israel Outrage Industry.” There is simply too much historical and emotional baggage for all involved.
Twenty years ago, during the Second Intifada and not long after 9/11, I was teaching at Yeshiva University in New York. I still believed a two-state solution was possible. Several of my very intelligent, committed, and Talmud trained students took issue with me. They called for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Presenting the conflict in existential, zero-sum, tribal terms, they said: “This is a war for survival. It’s Us or Them. Either we push them over the Jordan, or they push us into the sea. There is no middle ground.”
I have come to understand the logic of their position. The Palestinians have never wanted a two-state solution. (Nor have many Israelis when they realize what they would have to give up.) The shrunken, dependent, rump Palestine which is offered by the two-state solution, which you want to put on the table again, is seen by most Palestinians as a historic defeat and surrender after a hundred years of resistance to Zionism, Israel, and the American-led Liberal World Order. Which is why Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2008 walked away from proposed two-state end-of-conflict deals.
Even the future economically developed rump Palestine you envision would not satisfy the Palestinian national aspiration for a triumphant "Judenrein" Palestine “from the River to the Sea.” The October 7 Hamas pogrom confirmed what I came to understand after the Second Intifada: the goal and aspiration of most Palestinians, and not just Hamas, is the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of the Jewish people. They want to complete Hitler’s work. Which is the meaning of the battle cry, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” October 7 is a warning of what the Palestinians will do to every Jew in Israel and beyond if they ever get the power and the opportunity.
Geopolitically there is no room for two viable states between the Jordan and the sea. Israel will never allow a fully sovereign Palestinian state with a military capacity to emerge because the threat to its security and survival -- including the probability that such a state would be taken over by Hamas or some other eliminationist group -- would be too great a risk. An existential risk, which in the wake of the Holocaust, no Israeli government will be willing to take. Neither Israel, nor the Palestinians, can meet the minimal requirements of the other, or give them the guarantees they need. The gap between them is simply too great to be bridged. So, for now the conflict can only be managed.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is made even more tragic by the revelations over the past twenty years by the new advanced tools of genetic research, that Jews and Palestinians share a common Levantine ancestry “converging back into one less than 2,000 years ago.” Razib Khan sums up the findings of this research in a recent Substack post. As Razib puts it, Jews and Palestinians are Canaanite cousins. Both peoples have indigenous roots in the land they fight over. Their conflict is a reenactment of the biblical conflicts between Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and other paradigmatic brothers, which makes it all the more bloody and bitter.
Without some radical breakthrough or paradigm shift, which I do not see happening, I fear this cousins' conflict will only end in a second Holocaust or a second Nakba. Much as my Yeshiva students argued twenty years ago.
The hard, tragic, zero-sum reality is that you can have a Jewish State of Israel, or you can have an Arab State of Palestine, but you can’t have both. Geopolitics and the tribal realities of human nature are a bitch.
An estimated 100,000 civilians died in Tokyo fire-bombings, which, btw, helped bring WWII to close, and perhaps saved many more lives.
In Gaza, by the count of Hamas (accuracy?) 20,000 have died, and no one knows how many were Hamas, that is soldiers of Gaza, whether they wear uniforms or not. Probably half.
Japan and Germany became better places after Nazis and Tojo were removed. It wasn't easy or pretty.
The United States has lost any pretense of being an honest broker. Were it to intervene in Palestine this would be seen only as a more direct participation in Israel's open ethnic cleansing, and, barring that, outright genocide.
"If the US moves in decisively, the Israelis will play along"
Interesting theory.
Really, what's more likely in the proposed scenario? That US forces in what's supposedly a sovereign Palestine chase the Israeli settlers out of the West Bank? Or would US forces become the enforcer for a resumption of the slow-motion ethnic cleansing that was already taking place?
There's no fixing this. Best US can do (under the bipartisan "political reality" in Washington) is when Israel is done exterminating and/or expelling the Gazans, find a scapegoat for the domestic press. Probably Netanyahu personally. Then help bribe and/or threated the ICJ judges, to save the rest of the Israeli political establishment - who are all in on this in 9/11-hysteria style. Then USN can go back to doing FONOP's in a part of the world that's less hazardous to sail thru. Finally, hope the allies that stick with the US and Israel after all this (eg Brits, Germans) will pretend nothing actually happened. But even that's optimistic.
Here's the flipped take
"If Israel moves decisively, the US will play along"
Meaning, for the US, having a proper war against Yemen and Lebanon
---
Thanks for having the integrity to discuss the issue, in any case. More than we can say about much of the "PMC" class nowadays
Sir, what record of successful American State-building in the M/E justifies your optimism about this plan's viability?
The Americans need to treat Israel like a normal country similar to, say, Eisenhower during Suez Crisis. That must be the first priority.
Thank you for the article. Regarding your Biden poll however, why frame the question as “have you soured on Biden”. Not clear (ie i might have soured on him but still vote for him) and also brings bias into the question.
Hey Anusar, I commend you on a valiant attempt to find a pragmatic solution to the latest Middle East mess. But what you propose will not work. It will not even get off the ground. Such a proposal from the Biden administration would guarantee the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
After the post-9/11 twenty-year catastrophe of failed American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American people will not stand for American servicemen and women being put in harm’s way again to separate warring parties in the Middle East. Especially, as for now, a majority of Americans are still more sympathetic to Israel and would prefer to see Israel finish the job of defeating Hamas on its own, regardless of the growing toll of Palestinian civilian casualties.
I don’t believe the Israel-Palestinian conflict can be resolved along the lines you lay out. It is unresolvable for now and for the foreseeable future. While I once supported the two-state solution, I no longer consider it a realistic option. And at this point neither the Israelis, nor the Palestinians, trust the competence or commitment of the United States, after twenty years of chasing magical dancing democracy unicorns throughout the Middle East, not to make a complete mess of any solution we might try to impose. And then, when the costs of American intervention prove too high in blood and treasure, wash our hands and walk away as we did in Afghanistan.
Shaped by their tragic histories culminating in the Holocaust and the Nakba, neither Israelis nor Palestinians believe in the promises or durability of the American-led Liberal World Order. Both Israelis and Palestinians believe in and act on Thucydides’s maxim that in geopolitics “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
In the larger picture, when it comes to Israel and the Jews it’s just not possible for most observers and analysts to be fair and balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends and foes of Israel, living in alternate realities, committed with passionate intensity to uncompromising positions, engage in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably devolve into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage. And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely on the Left, is driven by anti-Semitism, as well as anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism. Just look at the pro-Hamas demonstrations and riots on college campuses and cities throughout America and Europe. (“NYPD, KKK, IDF you’re all the same!”) Walter Russell Mead called this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the “Israel Outrage Industry.” There is simply too much historical and emotional baggage for all involved.
Twenty years ago, during the Second Intifada and not long after 9/11, I was teaching at Yeshiva University in New York. I still believed a two-state solution was possible. Several of my very intelligent, committed, and Talmud trained students took issue with me. They called for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Presenting the conflict in existential, zero-sum, tribal terms, they said: “This is a war for survival. It’s Us or Them. Either we push them over the Jordan, or they push us into the sea. There is no middle ground.”
I have come to understand the logic of their position. The Palestinians have never wanted a two-state solution. (Nor have many Israelis when they realize what they would have to give up.) The shrunken, dependent, rump Palestine which is offered by the two-state solution, which you want to put on the table again, is seen by most Palestinians as a historic defeat and surrender after a hundred years of resistance to Zionism, Israel, and the American-led Liberal World Order. Which is why Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2008 walked away from proposed two-state end-of-conflict deals.
Even the future economically developed rump Palestine you envision would not satisfy the Palestinian national aspiration for a triumphant "Judenrein" Palestine “from the River to the Sea.” The October 7 Hamas pogrom confirmed what I came to understand after the Second Intifada: the goal and aspiration of most Palestinians, and not just Hamas, is the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of the Jewish people. They want to complete Hitler’s work. Which is the meaning of the battle cry, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” October 7 is a warning of what the Palestinians will do to every Jew in Israel and beyond if they ever get the power and the opportunity.
Geopolitically there is no room for two viable states between the Jordan and the sea. Israel will never allow a fully sovereign Palestinian state with a military capacity to emerge because the threat to its security and survival -- including the probability that such a state would be taken over by Hamas or some other eliminationist group -- would be too great a risk. An existential risk, which in the wake of the Holocaust, no Israeli government will be willing to take. Neither Israel, nor the Palestinians, can meet the minimal requirements of the other, or give them the guarantees they need. The gap between them is simply too great to be bridged. So, for now the conflict can only be managed.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is made even more tragic by the revelations over the past twenty years by the new advanced tools of genetic research, that Jews and Palestinians share a common Levantine ancestry “converging back into one less than 2,000 years ago.” Razib Khan sums up the findings of this research in a recent Substack post. As Razib puts it, Jews and Palestinians are Canaanite cousins. Both peoples have indigenous roots in the land they fight over. Their conflict is a reenactment of the biblical conflicts between Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and other paradigmatic brothers, which makes it all the more bloody and bitter.
https://www.razibkhan.com/p/more-than-kin-less-than-kind-jews
Without some radical breakthrough or paradigm shift, which I do not see happening, I fear this cousins' conflict will only end in a second Holocaust or a second Nakba. Much as my Yeshiva students argued twenty years ago.
The hard, tragic, zero-sum reality is that you can have a Jewish State of Israel, or you can have an Arab State of Palestine, but you can’t have both. Geopolitics and the tribal realities of human nature are a bitch.
Uncle Jo really didn’t think this through carefully and seems surrounded by idiots.
What asinine comparisons are made.
An estimated 100,000 civilians died in Tokyo fire-bombings, which, btw, helped bring WWII to close, and perhaps saved many more lives.
In Gaza, by the count of Hamas (accuracy?) 20,000 have died, and no one knows how many were Hamas, that is soldiers of Gaza, whether they wear uniforms or not. Probably half.
Japan and Germany became better places after Nazis and Tojo were removed. It wasn't easy or pretty.