US-Israeli Relations After the Election

[Famous Mortimer]

I tend to support citizenship and full rights for the West Bank Palestinians, at least for those who want it.

YOU may support this. But few Israelis would - and, really, nobody with power on Israeli side has ever proposed it.

The current president of Israel has proposed it.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm not really the biggest fan of Israel, and yes technical allowing Jews to migrate to Israel and not Palestinians under the slogan "right to return" is racist.

But really people how much lack of connection to reality do you have to lack, to make a statement so mindblowing idiotic/stupid/moronic. This is really on the level of then someone said that it was racist by women to choose sperm donor with a racial criteria.

For Israel to open up it borders to free Palestinian immigration is at very least suicide of the Israeli state.

If the state is inherently racist, there's a good argument for suicide.

[Famous Mortimer]

If I'm racist, you're racist.

[Famous Mortimer]

We're not talking about actual death though, we're talking about metaphorical suicide, an institution ceasing to exist. Or actually not even ceasing to exist. Just changing to be not racist. My point was that if being not racist changes the state so much that the original idea of the state can be said not to exist anymore, then the original idea of the state is not worth saving.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'd say offer any Israelis in the West Bank Palestinian citizenship. I imagine they'll use their right of return to Israel, but who knows.

Imagination and reality don't always mesh.  In some future historical tome of The Rise and Fall of the State of Israel this election just past will be a marker where the two-state solution was dealt its final death blow, tho in truth the settlements killed it long ago.  The only question now is how the eventual one-state solution will be reached, and how bloody it will be.

They said this in 2013, and they said this in 2009. Something can't die ten thousand times. Which in all likelihood means it's still alive.

If anything it died with the disaster of Barak PM+camp david+second intifada. But with passing time I become more complete with the realization that maybe it was never a viable option

What do you think is going to happen then? I remember last time we talked about this, you said the one state solution was ridiculous. Have you come around to its inevitability or do you just think the status quo will continue forever?

I think after the next election, we probably see prominent politicians on the left coming out for one state. I wouldn't be totally surprised if it happened before then.

[Famous Mortimer]

Basically, Israeli Zionist left is, first and foremost, Zionist

Haha.

Just no.

The Zionism of Meretz, and even large sections of Labor, can be summed up as "Jews should be allowed to live in the Land of Israel" that idea does not conflict at all with a one state solution.

[Famous Mortimer]

As to why the Israeli Arab parties support the two state solution rather than the one state solution:

1. Because the one state solution wasn't/isn't considered politically realistic. Sort of the same reason many US Democrats secretly wanted gay marriage for the last 20 years but never talked about it.

2. Because supporting the one state solution would have put them in danger of being banned. Technically, parties can be banned if they refuse to recognize the Jewish nature of the state so opposing the state outright would definitely be grounds for a ban. Of course, it's now clear the Supreme Court would never allow that but that was different back in the 80s and the 90s.

As both of these things changed, we will almost certainly see the position of the Arab parties change. There is already an internal debate within Balad about officially coming out for one state. Hadash would follow quite quickly. It's an open secret that Islamic Movement (UAL) fantasies about a MidEast wide caliphate, so their support of the two state solution was even more feigned than the others.

[Famous Mortimer]

Most Israeli arguments rely on treating the Arabs as a single unified nation. I would say this was disingenuous but then again, they treat the Jews as a single nation as well, so maybe it's not. It's still pretty dumb though. Palestinian Arabs are not Moroccan Arabs, they cannot be held accountable for each  others actions, at the individual level OR the "national" level.

[Famous Mortimer]

"But the solution to that is not to deny Jews their national state"

Jews are only entitled to a nation state if they have the population and the democratic support to back it up.

As long as they hold onto the West Bank, they don't have that.

As to the West Bank itself (with or without Gaza) they DO have the population and the democratic support to entitle them to self determination.

I'm curious as to what criteria you are using to determine which populations are entitled to self determination and which are not? It would seem popular support SHOULD be the only real criteria in the modern world.

[Famous Mortimer]

"If the issue is wanting to live in an Arab state"

"But the insistence that Palestinians want an Arab national state"


The Palestinians do not want an "Arab state". This is a straw man you are inserting into their mouths. They just want a state. It's only the Israelis who are insisting on maintaining certain ethnic majorities at all costs.

[Famous Mortimer]

As if Israel's conventional military supremacy means sh!t in the face of suicide bombings/terrorist attacks.