Their last encounter was also illuminating.

Let's unpack this post

First, Hamas will never make peace and has said so many many many times, so even if all the settlements disappeared tomorrow and every Palestinian demand (except, of course, full right of return) was met, there could still not be peace. Hamas can't even make peace with their fellow Palestinians in Fatah to end their civil war.

Tellingly, Frum never says whether he thinks Israel's occupation is a bad thing or not, or whether he thinks a two-state solution would be desirable (though he seems to have his doubts).

Here is a talk between Frum and Gorrenberg. Frum is clearly in favor of a two state solution if the Palestinians agreed to one. Even Gorrenberg does not believe the green line is a viable border.

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17943?in=37:40&out=44:12

Indeed, Frum offers the bizarre claim that Israel's settlements "are the consequences of Palestinian and Arab intransigence, not the cause." He is in effect saying that Israel had no choice but to spend the past 41 years (two-thirds of its history) encouraging half of million people to colonize the lands seized in 1967, at a cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

What he is saying is that if the Arabs/Palestinians had accepted peace in 1937, 1948 or 1967, there would be no settlements in the west bank at all which is completely true. Instead Israel was invaded twice and when it offered in 1967 to withdraw from all of the West bank in exchange for peace, it was utterly rebuffed.

You also forget that up until recently Palestinians and other Arabs made no distinction between Israelis living in Israel or the West Bank. To Palestinians, all of Israel was one big settlement and the green line was irrelevant. If Israel hadn't built settlements on the west bank, Palestinians would be asking Israel to stop natural growth in the settlement of Tel Aviv.

Now you can colorably argue that Israel should have stopped natural growth settlement construction (and tiny outposts) since Fatah, in theory, accepted a two state solution(there have been no new settlements). US policy, however, was to allow natural growth until changes in the last 6 months by Obama.

On one side are those who believe that the continued attempt to hold onto "Greater Israel" poses the real existential threat to Israel's existence, because Jews will eventually be a minority in the lands they control and they will be forced to create a full-fledged apartheid state in order to preserve Israel’s Jewish. character...On the other side are those who either actively favor a "greater Israel" or who don't think the occupation poses a serious long-term problem.

Wrong. You are making a straw man argument that is not close to reality. On one side is "return to the green line Daniel Levys" and the other side is "return to the green line with land swaps for the areas of major settlements." There is a tiny fraction of Israelis who wants to keep the entire west bank--a far smaller minority than those Palestinians who demand a full right of return in order to make peace.

In addition, a minority in the lands you have de facto control over is not apartheid when the minority is trying to kill you and who teaches it’s children to kill and hate you.

Let's say Afghanistan had 100 million people utterly devoted to the Taleban and 250 million who wanted peace with the US (as long as those 250 million could move to the US). Let’s say the peace supporters could never stop the Taleban supporters from firing rockets into American cities at will. Would America be an apartheid-state if it occupied Afghanistan to stop the rockets until the Taleban supporters renounced violence against the US? Of course not. If the US made peace with the peace camp it would mean nothing as Rockets would still be reigning down on its cities.

I'd like to thank Prof. Walt for recommending the above books and I look forward to reading them. Hopefully David Frum will do likewise.

I am almost finished reading Piers Brendon's book about the decline of the British Empire that was recommended by Prof. Walt a few weeks ago. This site is a great learning tool.

If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?

This is not a quote from Ben Gurion. It is from Nahum Goldmann's book and is his paraphrase of a conversation with Ben-Gurion 20 years earlier. If you read the whole page Goldman says that Ben-Gurion was reflecting on how Arab leaders think not on what he believed.

......down the avalanche

window upper right

The Arab states seem to side with Frum, at least in their own internal dealings with Palestinians. For example, Jordan is stripping Palestinians of their citizenship to prevent them from having any resettlement rights.

To Walt and his crowd this probably is a realistic way of dealing with the problem; very direct and straightforward to strip a people of their rights and far harsher than anything the Jews have done.

the boxer

ladysmith and paul simon

...that israeli supremacists can exploit.

all we have to do is let nature take its course, then cash in.

...naturally.

even if we're breeding for moral defects.

it's a problem

IMHO, the Two states would have to be completely free and sovereign STATES: i.e. Palestine could have an army, navy and air force JUST LIKE Israel.

To protect itself from its militant neighbor Palestine could also have nuclear arms.

Which Israeli government will seriously accept a REAL two-free-STATEs solution? None. Never.

What the Israelis talk of is a "One state plus one ghetto non-solution" aka "the status-quo".

THUS: the only real long-term solution is the one-state democratic solution.

It's fun to have these academic debates, but please let's face reality.

There is an industry of denial called the Middle East "peace process."

This industry feeds the current international consensus on the two-state solution as the only "comprehensive" settlement to the conflict. But there's a better solution, one that's slowly picking up steam among Palestinians and Israelis: a one-state model.

The two-state approach is flawed on two major counts. First, Israel's extensive colonization of the territories it seized in the 1967 war has made the creation of a Palestinian state there impossible. Israel was offering nothing more than "a mini-state of cantons," as Palestinian Authority negotiators recently complained. This leaves Israel in control of more than half of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem. With the Israeli position largely unchallenged by the international community, the only route to a two-state settlement will be through pressure on the weaker Palestinian side.

This leads to the second flaw: The two-state solution reflects only Israeli interests. It proposes to partition historic Palestine – an area that includes present-day Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem – massively and inequitably in favor of Israel as a Jewish state. By definition, this rules out possibility of Palestinian return except to the tiny, segmented West Bank territory that Israeli colonization has created, and to an overcrowded Gaza, which cannot accommodate the returnees.

Thus the "peace process" is really about making the Palestinians concede their basic rights to accommodate Israel's demands.

It also panders to Israel's paranoia over "demography," an ambiguous term that refers to the morally repugnant wish to preserve Israel's Jewish ethnic purity.

But the two-state solution's biggest flaw is that it ignores the main cause of the conflict: the Palestinian dispossession of 1948.

Today more than 5 million dispersed refugees and exiles long to return. It is fashionable to ignore this, as if Palestinians have less right to repatriation than the displaced Kosovars so ardently championed by NATO in 1999. As recognized by the Western powers then, the right to return was fundamental to peacemaking in the Bosnian crisis. It should be no less so in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yet the present peace process aims to preserve a colonialist Israel and make Palestinian dispossession permanent. This is not only illegal and unjust, it is also short-sighted. As the early Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky warned in 1923, native resistance to dispossession is irrepressible and Zionism would only survive with constant force to quell it.

Israel has heeded the lesson well. With an oppressive military occupation ruling over the West Bank and Gaza, it has herded Palestinians into ghettoes and prisons, aiming to paralyze any resistance. The response to this brutality is misery, expressed by some in violence against Israelis, and continuing instability in the region.

American collusion with Israel has led to growing anti-Americanism among Arabs and Muslims.

If the aim of the peace process is to resolve the conflict properly, then we must tackle the root of the problem: the creation of an exclusive state for one people in another people's territory. The strife this caused will end only when the Palestinian rights to repatriation and compensation are addressed. This cannot happen in a situation of Israeli hegemony.

A different approach that puts the principles of equity and sharing above dominance and oppression is needed: a one-state solution. In such a state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation. Resources could be shared, rather than hoarded by Israel. Jerusalem could be a city for both. Above all, the dispossessed Palestinians could finally return home.

Indulging Israel is a dangerous folly that postpones solution. It harms Palestinians, the region, and long-term Western interests. It even harms Israelis, who are less secure in Israel than anywhere else. Palestinian and Arab support for the two-state proposal only reflects resignation to Israel's superior power and fear of US reprisal, not conviction. The two-state proposal is unstable and cannot replace a durable solution based on equity, justice, and dignity.

A decade ago, the unitary state idea was ridiculed. Today, as the two-state solution recedes, a one-state solution is the stuff of mainstream discussion. Now it must become mainstream policy, too.

Nazi Germany was not acceptable and did not have a right to exist, even though Germany as a state obviously does have a right to exist. (Nazi Germany was perpetuated by force of arms and racist laws)

Apartheid South Africa was not acceptable and did not have a right to exist, even though South Africa as a state obviously does have a right to exist. (Apartheid South Africa was perpetuated by force of arms and racist laws)

The current form of inherently racist "greater Israel" is not acceptable and does not have a right to exist, even though a version of Israel as a state obviously does have a right to exist. (Zionist racist "greater" Israel is perpetuated by force of arms and racist laws).

from 60 minutes -- worth watching:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349n

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/04/AR2009070402026_pf.html

Lawlessness From Israeli Settlers

Israeli courts have declared the wall being built near the Palestinian village of Bilin illegal, and yet it continues to be built ["In the West Bank, Suburb or Settlement?," news story, June 30].

I visited the West Bank in October and saw other instances of this phenomenon: A court rules in favor of Palestinians, but the court's order is ignored or rendered meaningless.

While in East Jerusalem, I stayed with Fawzieh and Mohammed al-Kurd, members of a family who became refugees in 1948 when they lost their home. A Jewish settler group wants to obtain the property the al-Kurds now own, along with the homes of 23 other Palestinian families in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood, in order to tear down the houses there and build new housing only for Jews.

The settler group registered a claim to ownership of the Palestinians' property in 1972, asserting that it had purchased the land in the late 1800s. An Israeli court ordered the Palestinian families of Sheik Jarrah to pay rent to the Jewish group, despite the fact that the families had owned and lived in their houses for decades.

The Sheik Jarrah families naturally refused to do so. In 2006, after an expensive legal battle, another Israeli court found the settlers' ownership claim to be fraudulent, but the land registrar of the Jerusalem municipality refused to reinstate the Palestinian families' ownership.

Fawzieh and Mohammed were evicted last November for refusing to pay rent to the settler group on the basis of the settlers' fraudulent claims. Mohammed al-Kurd had a heart attack on the night of the eviction and died a few days later. Fawzieh remains homeless, a refugee once again, and is living in a tent. This is Israeli justice if you are Palestinian.

JEAN ATHEY

Brookeville

Fawzieh and Mohammed were evicted last November for refusing to pay rent to the settler group on the basis of the settlers' fraudulent claims.

As far as I can tell, this letter from a reader who is a member of an advocacy group is based on the Palestinian telling of the account to her. There is no indication that she did any research into the validity of the story.

It tugs at the emotional heartstrings and impels people like Brett here to hold blameless the perpetrators of terrorism, but a lot of people would want to see more proof before advocating that Fawzieh and Mohammed strap on a bomb belt and murder Jewish women and children.

"American collusion with Israel has led to growing anti-Americanism among Arabs and Muslims".

The detailed response by Clint stated this above.
The Anti-Americanism mentioned is a fact.
However, what seems to have been forgotten not just in this comment but by most observers is that the US is almost totally disliked in Israel as well. I have seen examples on film of Israelis showing their disrespect and dislike of America, time and again and recent surveys show a frightening figure of support for the US and even worse for Obama himslef, making me consider that the Israelis are in fact, racist based on the comments made. The comments made by those up to military age were insulting in the extreme. This, mind you, from a country that has received trillions of dollars from the US over time and which has been treated as a favorite son and under total protection since day one.
Such is the result of the US citizens and politicians who are allowed to reduce the power of the US to be impartial and negotiate a solution because of the fact that they are beholden to the insidious Jewish lobby in their own country. The sooner they are purged and banned for their grafting activities and forced to be either a US citizen of an Israeli, the better for the US. You can't be both.
The comments on Walt's article today are really showing the partisan nature of the commentators.
The less the Jewish commentators say about their early leaders, the better as all came from a decidedly criminal European background and showing it in their new activities in the stolen land, Palestine. Some of the quotes from such people, many of whom went on to be Prime Ministers should be an embarrassment to all Jews, everywhere. Strangely, their arrogance is such that those early comments from Ben Gurion and others are held as tributes to their race. Amazing.

Israel is an illicit pseudo-state born out of terrorism.

It stole land from Arabs and is reaping the whirlwind thereof. Palestinians do a little terrorism now and then to get their land back -- Israel does state-sponsored terrorism.

.....But, hey, don't take my word for it: listen to this knighted Jewish UK Member of Parliament on the Israeli "mind"set:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8&feature=related

"Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism"

"Tzipi Livni's Father was a Terrorist"

Astonishing claims in the House of Parliament. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland....