Here's Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" on Charlie Rose talking about an upcoming "60 Minutes" piece on the settlers on the West Bank: He says that history has passed the 2-state solution by. It is impossible to remove the 300,000 settlers. Any Israeli government that tries to remove them will fall. Many of the soldiers themselves are settlers… The only remote possibility for the 2-state solution is for "the American president to dictate to the Israelis, the West Bank settlements must be evacuated." The Israelis would panic if there was any tension between them and the U.S. (of course, they've never been weaned.) And the president won't do that.
The Israelis have thumbed their noses at American presidents for years. The only president to buck the Israelis was George Bush I, and after promising not to build settlements, the Israelis kept building settlements. Simon mentions "domestic political" considerations. Says that a president could never attempt taking on Israel within 2 years of his possible reelection. I wonder why.
So there are three options, Simon says. 1, "One state with total democracy." Votes for Arabs. "It will never happen." Israelis are facing a likely Jewish minority within the next two decades (John Mearsheimer says that it may already be majority Arab, given all the Israeli diasporites…). They don't want an Arab majority. 2, Ethnic cleansing. Move the Arabs to Jordan. 3, Apartheid. And "Palestinians say" that apartheid already exists. Jews have their own "lovely highways." Etc.
Simon was incisive, judgmental. But please tell me any of this that Walt and Mearsheimer didn't tell us about years ago.
