Geoffrey Gray writes:
Analysis: Crisis Imperils 2-State Plan":
Hezbollah and Hamas… is fighting against a diplomatic solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict–and with that, against the two-state
solution."
This assertion is misleading propaganda. These countries and
non-state entitites do not oppose a negotiated settlement. Rather
they oppose both the current status in which Palestine is occupied and an
Israeli imposed two-state solution that would turn Palestine into an archipelago
of bantustans.
Weiss adds:
Gray's comment reminds us that Israel is the most powerful agent of conditions in Israel/Palestine. Robert Simon said on Charlie Rose the other night that the two-state solution was killed by the fact that there are 300,000 settlers on the West Bank who won't go without governments falling and worse. In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Walt and Mearsheimer produced an important fact never reported before: that former Senator Adlai Stevenson blamed his narrow defeat in the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial race on his opposition to Israeli settlements when in the Senate in 1980. Stevenson had written an amendment to reduce aid to Israel because of the settlements. He knew the amendment would not pass "but he wanted to show that his colleagues would support Israel even if it was acting in ways that were contrary to official U.S. policy." Emphasis mine. W&M write:
"When Stevenson ran for governor two years later, he quickly discovered that campaign contributions began to dry up, and indeed, went to his oponent. According to the former senator, he and his wife [Stevenson's words] 'were reviled as anti-Semitic. Some in the press turned hostile. Jewish Democratic Committeemen wilted under pressure. Jewish friends and supporters were also reviled… the lobby made the difference in that election many times over.'"
A few necessary comments: 1, Walt and Mearsheimer were attacked for doing no reporting. This was original reporting they did; has anyone picked it up? 2, Mainstream American Jewish defense of the illegal colonies, which included Obama supporters Mel Levine and Dennis Ross, was as vociferous and stiffnecked in its day as the defense of the war crimes in Gaza is today. Both colonies and Gaza actions express the same expansionist desire in the Israeli state.
In fact, they bespeak the unspoken agenda of Israel that Dennis Ross mentions in his book and that John Bolton has lately advanced again in the Wall Street Journal: "confederal" status of Palestinians with Jordanians. Transfer. Ethnic cleansing. End of "the two-state solution."
