I am getting ready to hit the road, so I may not be quite as available as usual, but before I do I have a question for those who still insist upon the two-state solution.It is this:
Just how the heck do you expect to implement it without Palestinian-Arab cooperation?Decade after decade we beg them to accept two states and decade upon decade they refuse and we get the blame from people like John Kerry.
Fuck it.
Laurie and I are headed for Baja in celebration of Laurie and Danika's 40th birthday - crazy twins - where I intend to catch many innocent fishes.
Maureen is going to come and stay at the house and take care of Georgy-McPorridge.
Little Snort croaked, by the way, the other day.
At first I thought that the athletic and bouncing-around 3 year old George gave Little Snort a heart attack, but dogs do not get heart attacks.
He was only 8 years old, but he just up and died on Wednesday of symptoms from an enlarged heart.I feel like G-d just reached down his hand and took this little poooch out of our life.
I loved that little creature and he is just gone.
There is now a Snort-Shaped-Hole in my world.
George, a 65 pound black and white Border Collie, is Fred's worthy successor.
But Little Snort cannot have a successor for the simple fact that there are no other dogs like Little Snort.
{That is, if he actually was a dog and not King of the Hamsters.}
We are going to miss this little guy very much.
I cannot even tell you.
Christ Amighty, they're dropping like flies.
Short answer for right now, since I won't be around much for the next few days, either - as I noted in the comments at your Elder piece, I think the terminology is the problem. It's up to the Palestinian-Arabs to get serious and create their state with the lands Israel leaves them in my preferred (unilateral declaration of final borders) scenario.
ReplyDeleteThe phrasing of "one state" vs. "two states" might be the problem. There is indeed a third way (and probably a fourth, fifth and sixth), which is consistent with the understood ideal of a Two State Solution, which yet does not require Israel to be tied down forever by a 'peace partner' which is in reality anything but.
(Sorry to hear about Snort!)
I guess my question is this:'
DeleteCan we have a two-state solution that does not include Palestinian-Arab cooperation?
I do not see how it is possible?
Do you?
I think an Israel-with-final-borders-plus-whatever-the-hell-the-Palestinian-Arabs-do-with-the-lands-they're-left-with situation is better than any other option, short of the cooperation leading to a negotiated solution which I would guess we both agree we won't see in either of our lifetimes. The status quo isn't horrible, either, but it's draining in many ways, and far from ideal for all parties.
DeleteI also see it as consistent in principle with a two state solution, at least from the angle that there would no longer be an 'occupation.'
So I guess my answer to your question is a conditional yes, though of course it would be nice to have their cooperation for once.
It's only hard to understand if you wonder aloud that the 'other' state, the Arab one, is anyone's problem but their own. It's not. It's their problem. If their solution is to wall themselves off in a gasoline fueled abattoir then that's on them. I can this the 1+ state solution. The '1' is Israel and the '+' is whatever Conan the Barbarian fever swamp the Arabs concoct for themselves. Who cares how or if it functions. We've been at the point for decades that the very notion of what a 'state' is, for Arabs is different or odd. Libya is a 'state', with 2 or no governments. Lebanon is a 'state' with at least 3 governments. Syria is a 'state' with no organized political homogeneity at all. Ditto Iraq. Ditto Yemen. They're not 'states' they're places where groups exert brute force to rape main and kill other groups for money, power and bragging rights.
ReplyDeleteTo me, that seems like a reasonable outcome for the Arabs in Gaza and Yesha. The problem is the touchpoints where their presence intersects the Jews. The ragged outposts and bloody borders of Islam. Which hasn't moderated in a thousand years and it never will.