Month: 7 Adar I 5784 (February 2024)

She doesn't get to make decisions about who's a Jew, or who's a good Jew and who's a bad Jew, anymore than Donald Trump does.

She doesn't get to make decisions about who's a Jew, or who's a good Jew and who's a bad Jew, anymore than Donald Trump does.

Somehow I don't think the Israeli public is going to go for a state headed by the PA, which called the Safed terrorist attack "heroic", and can't bring itself to stop paying terrorists' families after they kill Jews. Everybody keeps screaming "two state solution!", and absolutely nobody is putting the screws to the PA to start reforming itself. As long as that continues to not happen, people like Thomas Friedman are living in dreamland, because giving the PA a state after OCtober 7 under these conditions really is rewarding Hamas for that day.

There's no reason for Israel to get on board with anything the international community does, not after the only thing it's done is sit on the sidelines and criticize Israel for doing its best to eliminate Hamas. Nobody with any sway in Israel is going to go along with any kind of unilaterally declared Palestinian Authority-run state. Not unless it's completely reformed from top to bottom. If the international community wants that then it's going to need to put boots on the ground, which its various citizenries will never support. This is just intellectuals fantasizing again about how even though nothing they've done over the last 30 years has even remotely worked, it's going to work this time because reasons. Netanyahu's definitely had a role in all this, but he didn't hold a gun to anyone's head and tell them to do October 7, or to commit terrorist attacks, or to insist on a right of return that everybody knows is impossible for Israel to even entertain.

So at some point, the western intellectuals pushing this need to tell the Palestinian intellectual class that yes, you do actually have some agency here and yes, you do have to deal with the terrorist-supporting PA and help fix that and yes, you guys keep making horrible choices for the Palestinians and you need to knock that off. And all I'm seeing is intellectuals telling Israel about everything it's doing wrong/not doing while the Palestinians have zero agency. And that's never going to work, no matter what the world has decided.

Oh and then there's the perpetual refugee issue.

Yeah I think let the remaining 30,000 return with descendants settled in countries of residence is definitely something doable. But Palestinian leadership and intelectuals have to agree to stuff like this and they have to start selling it to the street. They also have to start selling recursive reform of the PA to the street. Otherwise the world can say whatever it wants and this is never happening. Netanyahu and his government are gone after this regardless of what the international community decides in any case, so even if this were all Netanyahu's fault, he's going to be out of the picture.

@swarming That's exactly how this will go down, and I'm pretty sure the Israeli public, in general and including Israeli Arabs, is not up for another round of that. Especially if it includes continued terrorist attacks and God forbid another October 7.

@ViciousBabushka They already started a war, on October 7, and Israel is being condemned for smashing them. This hasn't worked at any time in the past, there has been no change in Palestinian politics on this score, what makes you think that somehow this time will be different? Because the international community pinky swears it's going to reform the PA when it's refused to do anything about even UNRWA for decades?

@8124 @ViciousBabushka There will eventually have to be a two-state solution. Not as any reward for October 7, perceived or otherwise, and not without some serious reform of both the PA and Palestinian politics. None of these things are happening just because the international community says here we'll give you a state first. That already happened with Gaza, a plurality of Palestinian adults elected Hamas, and here we are now. There's a reason Israel isn't going for this and it's not just because Netanyahu's a jerk.