What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[The Minsky Moment]

As they should be.

[Eddie Teach]

The one unalterable fact is that all Presidential campaigns from NYC mayors are doomed.

Yet NYC reality show personalities have a real shot.

[Grey Fox]

*I listen to ESPN podcasts.

What do you listen to?

On the regular: PTI, High Noon, ESPN on Ice & 30 for 30. The Daily one when they talk puck.

[Syt]

Trump offers peace in our time!

[Admiral Yi]

3 1/2 years well spent Jared.

[Valmy]

Man it is magical to see it all come together like that.

[Admiral Yi]

Let the dessert blossom with many tidy bungalows and spacious ranch style homes, all within easy commuting distance of our state of the art computer chip production facility.  Firing of rockets is strictly forbidden by terms of the homeowners association agreement.

[The Minsky Moment]

Looks like the old double column plan that Sharon was pushing in the 70s

[alfred russel]

I remember right after trump took office he commented he might not even need 4 years to achieve peace in the middle east. I guess he was right.

[Barrister]

Am I wrong, or are the Palestinians getting less land then was offered back in 2000?


And apparently Israel is using this as an excuse to annex the portions of the West Bank this plan says they get anyways.

[The Minsky Moment]

Am I wrong, or are the Palestinians getting less land then was offered back in 2000?

Quite a bit less and also less than in 2008.

[Valmy]

Am I wrong, or are the Palestinians getting less land then was offered back in 2000?

Well they sure as hell were never going to get more.

[OttoVonBismarck]

So I think Kushner is an idiot but I will say one aspect of his view is probably actually correct: he went into this believing the Palestinians have a diminishing position that only gets worse over time, so they should be inclined to take as best as they can get now, because in the future they likely get worse.

I'm not arrogant enough to think I have a fix for the Palestinian problem, but the reality is we know from other occupations/territorial "holdings" from history, is the longer Israel exercises de facto control over this stuff the more likely it is the Palestinians never get to do so. In a sense Israel's holding of various internationally recognized "Palestinian" territory is no different than Russia holding Crimea or China holding Tibet (something that is still subject to an active UN Resolution decrying it as illegal--no one talks about it because it essentially is a dead issue.) The big difference is for reasons unclear to me Palestine has a very vigorous European-based group of Western advocates (that Crimea and Tibet don't enjoy--despite being occupied under far less justified circumstances), and Palestine has a violent resistance movement to the present occupation. We don't really have that in Crimea/Tibet (we obviously have violence between Russia/Ukraine in the Donbas region, but Crimeans basically seem more or less content with the current situation.)

But the reality is Palestine's violent resistance probably isn't helping them long run, and if anything I think it's "worn out" a lot of the Israeli moderates and liberals on the issue. It frankly looks like to me the Palestinians long ago turned their nose at the best deals they were ever going to get, and it's highly unlikely deals coming in the future will be any better than this one.

Now, none of that covers up the fact Jared Kushner is an idiot who has no business anywhere near this conflict, but this kernel of his understanding of it is frankly not wrong.

[Barrister]

So I think Kushner is an idiot but I will say one aspect of his view is probably actually correct: he went into this believing the Palestinians have a diminishing position that only gets worse over time, so they should be inclined to take as best as they can get now, because in the future they likely get worse.

But is that necessarily true?

I mean yes their on the ground strength is weaker then it has been.  Israeli security is stronger, very few terrorist attacks come from the occupied territories.  Palestinians have less international support with people like the Saudis opening up to Israel a bit.

But demographics have always been the looming fact, and those trends haven't changed.  There's still the very real likelihood that Jews become the minority in the whole of Israel and the West Bank.

[Tonitrus]

How about forgetting all these walls/tunnels/bridges, and just have a single secular state with free movement and full citizenship/democratic rights?

Too crazy?