Is Israel Too Strong for America?

[Valmy]

The concessions to the Palestinians on the West Bank have caused a halt on suicidebombing. And compare the present situation with the situation in the 70's, 80's or 90's. How many planes are taken over by Palestinians since then?

Rabin died for nothing. 

Sure the situation was actually better in the 70s and 80s which is ridiculously absurd but then...this is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where nothing makes any sense.

[Valmy]

Fatah's outrageous corruption would explain why Palestinians would vote for the other guy; it doesn't explain why the only other significant party out there to support is a notorious terrorist organization.

Thank you.  The entire reason Hamas is a significant political force capable of winning that election in the first place is because of their hardline anti-Israel position in the first place.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Interesting article but, I fear, terribly... optimistic (in its own weird way).

"but because it is a Jewish state in which one community—Jews—is set above others, in an age when that sort of state has no place"

A state like this only seems to have no place in what are western-influenced sensibilities. As we can see there are states all over the world where there is something as described in the quote in place, with nary a person batting an eye. Even more, many of these states are mid-eastern states where if you're not arab or (sunni/shia) muslim (or in some cases both) you're a second or third rank citizen. In some cases this attitude is there because of nationalism/ethnicism (like morocco and it's second-tier berbers), in other cases because of religion (almost every muslim country vis-à-vis religious minorities), in a few cases because of both (like Malaysia)
The Palestinians suffer from this affliction too, probably because of religious sentiment (I guess).
So until attitudes change a bination state is unlikely to work. It'd only result in a new phase of acrimony as one group tries to gain the upper hand and twist the state towards its nefarious goals.
A bination jewish-palestinian state would suffer the same fate as Lebanon: dwindling non-muslim minorities until they eventually become irrelevant.

[Valmy]

The only possible positive outcome of the situation is the exact same one we wanted way back in the 40s: a partition of the territory into an Arab and a Jewish state.  Unfortunately the Arabs have never been very interested in that and now the Israelis are increasingly starting to agree with them.

I am not sure what the outcome will be...it seems incredible it can continue like this indefinitely but then it kinda has been I suppose.

[Warspite]

Did the Palestinians vote in Hamas to say fuck you to Israelis or because Fatah was outrageously corrupt?

Fatah's outrageous corruption would explain why Palestinians would vote for the other guy; it doesn't explain why the only other significant party out there to support is a notorious terrorist organization.

A failure of the political class.

[Malthus]

Your reasoning has been proven false by facts unfortunately.  Concessions to the Palestinians have proven to have exactly the opposite effect than what you are saying.  How can you possibly support the idea that making concessions will bring Israel money and peace given that fact?

The concessions to the Palestinians on the West Bank have caused a halt on suicidebombing. And compare the present situation with the situation in the 70's, 80's or 90's. How many planes are taken over by Palestinians since then?

Rabin died for nothing. 

Israelis tend to believe that the relative lack of suicide attacks on them is a function of the huge-ass wall they've built between themselves and the Palestinians on the WB.

As for lack of hijackings - airline security is now rather different than it was.

[Valmy]

A failure of the political class.

Well whatever the reason the effect is the same.  Any chance of any good things happening with the Palestinians is shot while Hamas controls Gaza.

[grumbler]

Not an unknown.

An unknown known?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The only possible positive outcome of the situation is the exact same one we wanted way back in the 40s: a partition of the territory into an Arab and a Jewish state.  Unfortunately the Arabs have never been very interested in that and now the Israelis are increasingly starting to agree with them.

I am not sure what the outcome will be...it seems incredible it can continue like this indefinitely but then it kinda has been I suppose.

my thought too.
We'll see what happens but it's not something that'll be decided by US, EU or Russian mediation. It'll be settled by the Israelis and the Arabs. It my be relatively bloodless but I doubt it, given what went before.

[The Minsky Moment]

David Horowitz is an American.  The New Republic is an American magazine.  Where is the "Israeli attack on Tony Judt?"

I am very embarrassed.  I meant the American right's attack on him.  He has a few articles in Haaretz, and at least until recently I think dialog about Israeli policy in Palestine was way more open in Israel than in the United States.

David Horowitz is a jackass and FrontPage is a joke.  Being attacked by him is meaningless.

The TNR thing is more serious b/c Judt was associated with them for many years, but it is more of a personal thing with Martin Peretz (the publisher) than reflecting anything broader about Judt's standing with the punditocracy in general.

[The Minsky Moment]

Did the Palestinians vote in Hamas to say fuck you to Israelis or because Fatah was outrageously corrupt?

Fatah's outrageous corruption would explain why Palestinians would vote for the other guy; it doesn't explain why the only other significant party out there to support is a notorious terrorist organization.

A failure of the political class.

That's a tactful way to put it.  Another way to put it is a deeply dysfunctional political culture, characterized by intimidation, pervasive conspiratorial thinking and deliberate dissemination of disinformation and racist propaganda.

[Razgovory]

Israelis tend to believe that the relative lack of suicide attacks on them is a function of the huge-ass wall they've built between themselves and the Palestinians on the WB.

As for lack of hijackings - airline security is now rather different than it was.

I think the wall has something to do with it as well.  The switch to rocket attacks indicates that there was still a desire to kill Jews.

[Admiral Yi]

The article I read way back in the Atlantic on torture by that Blackhawk Down author claimed that a significant factor in the decrease in suicide bombings was the development of the Israeli intelligence services ability to track down and kill the enablers, planners, recruiters, etc.

[Ideologue]

"The theory that Japanese and Jews have common ancestry" were sold.

Huh? 

Well, technically, they do.  I'd suspect it's a pretty prosaic topic for a book, though.

[Jos Theelen]

If the halt in westbank suicide bombings due to fewer attempts being made, or better and tighter security on behalf of the Israelis?  Same question for the decline in airline hijackings.

Which concessions are you referring to?  The big wave of suicide bombings came after the concessions of Oslo.

Sure the situation was actually better in the 70s and 80s which is ridiculously absurd but then...this is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where nothing makes any sense.

The whole situation today is far better than the situation in the last 40 years. The Palestinians have more or less a bit of their own state, the extremists are confined to the Gazastrip. Israelian civilians are much, much safer from suicide bombers. The last "real" war was in 1982 in Lebanon (around 17000 deaths, compare that with the present situation).

This makes perfectly sense. If you work hard to contain conflicts and  make concessions, you can end conflicts, like what happened in Spain, Belfast, Kosovo and other places. Rabin and other Israelian leaders understood that, some Palestinian leaders understand that as well. It will takea lot  more time, but that's what you get in a 50 years old conflict.

The people who think that concessions are futile, have no effect, are contraproductive or are defeats, are wrong. People who don't want to make concessions, have to fight their whole life.