The American lib-left seems to be getting the news that the two-state-solution is having its death rattles (3 years of death rattles, unusual case doctor). Joe Klein wants sanctions. And here’s the Nation on the crumbling of the Palestinian Authority. It is unusual to read such a starkly-honest statement of the situation in even a liberal American publication. Roane Carey in the latest Nation:
There’s no question that the conflict is at a bleak impasse. But if the PA collapses, there will be one salutary consequence: it will strip off the mask that there is anything in the territories beyond Israeli occupation. Even at its height in the ’90s, Palestinian autonomy was negligible. Now the undeniable fact of near total Israeli control, and the increasing difficulty of pretending that nearly half a century of occupation is temporary, will force some stark decisions on both peoples.
The Palestinians, quite apart from the desperate need to heal the Hamas-Fatah split and reforge a unified leadership, will have to develop a new liberation strategy. Israel, for its part, may seem to be holding all the cards at this point. But as the occupation becomes ever more deeply implanted, it will soon enough become undeniable that, for all practical purposes, there is only one nation between the Jordan and the sea, composed of roughly equal numbers of Palestinians and Jews. Then Israel will "face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights," former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned when he was still in office, "and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished." So Israel will have to confront its own existential dilemma: are the settlements really worth retaining if it means the eventual end of Zionism?
