Notwithstanding his smearing up and down the columns of the mainstream press a year and two back, Steve Walt is one of the most sober, calm, judicious voices in foreign policy that you will ever encounter–just what you'd expect of a Harvard dean and blogger for Foreign Policy. Here's a fine piece by him on why today's election will make very little difference in Israeli policy where it matters, and why Americans must begin coming to terms with the death of the two-state solution. (Horowitz begins that intellectual labor below.)
I say the Israel lobby needs to grapple Walt to its soul now with hoops of steel. He is for the two-state solution as the best alternative, but he predicts that when that fails, the U.S. will have to come out for an Israel that grants full rights to its Palestinian minority in all of historical Palestine. "Lord knows I have plenty of respect for the Israel lobby's ability to
shape U.S. foreign policy, but even AIPAC and the other heavyweight
institutions in the lobby would have great difficulty maintaining the
'special relationship' if Israel was an apartheid state," says Walt.
But my favorite passage here is Walt's reminder that all the handwringing over the two-state solution is coming from people who long opposed Palestinian self-determination, indeed did so for 50 years after the U.N. said the Palestinians had that right. A true disgrace. Walt [emphases mine]:
development. The 1993 Oslo Accords do not talk explicitly about a
Palestinian state, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the
agreement, never endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state in public.
And when First Lady Hillary Clinton spoke
about the need for a Palestinian state back in 1998, she was roundly
criticized, and the White House promptly distanced itself from her
remarks. In fact, Bill Clinton didn't endorse the idea of a Palestinian
state until his last month in office. The mainstream "consensus" behind
this solution is in fact a relatively recent creation.
Today,
invoking the "two-state" mantra allows moderates to sound reasonable
and true to the ideals of democracy and self-determination; but it
doesn't force them to actually do anything to bring that goal about.
Indeed, defending the two-state solution has become a recipe for
inaction, a fig leaf that leaders can utter at press conferences while
ignoring the expanding settlements and road networks on the West Bank
that are rendering it impossible. Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
is a perfect illustration: He has lately become an eloquent voice in
favor of two states, warning of the perils
that Israel will face if the two-state option is not adopted. Yet his
own government continued to expand the settlements and undermine
Palestinian moderates, thereby putting the solution Olmert supposedly
favors further away than ever, and maybe even making it unworkable.
(Phil Weiss)
