The West would -LIKE- a formal deal because that's the cleanest neatest way to resolve things. Don't scoff at them for wanting that because you and the Israeli's and any person with a lick of sense WANTS a formal peace deal.
But what the overwhelming majority of people internationally will settle for is to just not have to think about the Israel/Palestinian matter much anymore. And even unilateral withdrawal will meet that need. The world wants wine but they'll settle for water; but Israel can't make the word accept salt or sand. It just won't work.
Well that's not at all a difficult question. Israel would say "You have the right of return to the Palestinian entity, go nuts, we'll be over here on our side of the green line dealin with all the settler nutters we had to drag kicking and screaming out of the West Bank". And that would be that.
Absolutely the online left and the arabists would yelp and scream. Absolutely -you- will be annoyed and enraged by their talk. But in the real world where it actually matters the matter would be settled.
"However if elections were held right now in the West Bank, Hamas would easily win."
That is enormous conjecture on your part based on polls which are, foundationally, talk which is, fundamentally, cheap. If the Palestinian masses in the West Bank truly wanted Hamas in charge Hamas would be in charge. Hamas managed to get in charge in Gaza in the first place because Gaza was a) isolated from Fatahs' power based -in the west bank- and b) because Fatah themselves were not very interested in governing/controlling Gaza and didn't put up much of a fight to retain it. Presuming that Hamas, especially a Hamas with the utter disaster of Gaza on their resume, could easily take over the West Bank is an incredible leap. There is a world of difference between telling a stranger on the phone “Yeah I want Israel to vanish into thin air” and actually choosing to put guys in charge who you know are going to get your house, your block and your entire community levelled.
Baked into the presumption of unilateral withdrawal is a recognition that the party unilaterally withdrawing gets to draw the lines. That is reality and the reality is that if Israel unilaterally withdrew Israel would draw the lines in manners that benefitted them the most which is to say that they'd incorporate all the settlements along the green line that they possibly could. Pretending otherwise is delusional and if the Palestinians and their supporters don't like that, well the alternative is to negotiate a mutual settlement with land swaps and agreed boundaries as well as the Palestinians agreeing that any "right of return" would apply only to returning to the new Palestinian entity and not Israel.
Likewise, with “mowing the grass”. If Israel withdraws the Palestinians can absolutely expect that if they host attacks on Israel, those attacks will be returned disproportionately. This is one of the core lessons of the Gazan withdrawal. Sharon withdrew Israel unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. The world gave Israel a virtual blank check with regards to Gaza for almost a full twenty fishing years as a result of that. Frankly, in my opinion, it was only the reality of the continuing occupation of the West Bank that caused that blank check to gradually expire. If Israel withdrew from the West Bank (unilaterally or not) I’d fully expect that international opinion towards “mowing the grass” would be to tell the Palestinians “you play stupid games you win stupid prizes”.
“The real question is whether Israel going to war occasionally and doing to the WB what it’s doing to Gaza is really a better solution than this corrosive settlement thing.”
Let us note, first, that Israel having to do to the West Bank what it did in Gaza is pretty much the absolute worst-case scenario for outcomes of withdrawal. With that being recognized let us analyse Israel’s position in that worst case scenario. In that scenario Israel is:
a) Demographically secure. A right of return is now utterly impossible. There is no grey zone Palestinian population that could potentially, in the future, be incorporated into Israeal. The demographic threat is over.
b) Reputationally secure. The lesson of Gaza is very clear on this. Israel got 20 years of near carte blanche freedom of action towards Gaza after they withdrew. Israel can entirely survive even significant terror attacks from a worst case scenario West Bank. There is zero doubt of that. Israel can’t economically survive international isolation.
c) Ideologically secure. The identarian left was rocked back on their heels for a considerable period of time after the Gazan withdrawal. The only thing I’ve seen that resurrected it was the steady drum beat of settler idiocy and Israeli hypocrisy from within the West Bank. The plight of Palestinian refugees away from Israel and the West Bank just didn’t/doesn’t move the needle much. Even the violence in Gaza itself was a side subject. I just don’t think anti-Israeli sentiment can continue its march without the occupation to fuel it. There isn’t enough grist there. The further left will be anti-Israeli as long as Israel is on top but the further left cannot threaten Israels’ well being as a practical sense. It is only by extending anti-Israeli sentiment out of the fringes that it can be a threat and only the occupation is capable of motivating that extension.
So even the very worst possible outcome of a withdrawal with regards to the behavior of the Palestinians still leaves Israel in a better position than it is now. And Palestinians behaving in that worst case way would reap genuine repercussions that would hold out hope that their unambiguously suffering the consequences of their actions on the body of their own state would eventually change their attitude towards attacks on Israel. We have seen this exact thing happen in Lebanon- we have no reason to think it wouldn’t happen in the West Bank. Moreover it is overwhelmingly more likely that Fatah would remain in control and that the West Bank would not devolve into a worse case outcome.
Our really big problem is, as Lee notes, that Israeli’s themselves don’t want to withdraw as a matter of course. It used to be that they didn’t want to withdraw without getting assurances in return “we won’t endure the painful costs of unilaterally withdrawing without getting promises in return” but with the right ascendant in Israel right now they’re rapidly approaching a “we don’t want to withdraw, period.” State and that’s a brutal problem.
Well, let's be real here, the Palestinians wouldn't budge even if all the nattering nabobs on the internet said in a chorus that they should. I can assure you the Palestinians aren't deeply concerned about the opinions of people on twitter.
Oh I understand it too. But if you think the Palestinians hate Israel and want it destroyed then the logical thing for them to do would be to refuse to make the symbolic gestures the Israeli's say they need to withdraw. Because any clear sighted student of real politic can see that continuing the occupation is the only plausible was of destroying the Jewish state.
You know what would get Israel unentangled from the west bank with absolutely no hope of a right of return? Withdrawal. And you can't pretend, Lee, that the ascendant political coalition in Israel doesn't, nakedly, want to keep the West Bank territories.
Except Israel already has terror camps set up around it and they survive just fine. What they aren't surviving, just fine, is the occupation in the West Bank which is steadily and relentlessly undermining their long-term standing. The occupation is basically a government subsidy subsidizing the most right-wing loons in their society to turn Israel into South Africa (but without all the primary resources).
As for the Palestinians? The occupation is functionally a responsibility subsidy for them too keeping them completely without agency. If Israel withdraws and the West Bank Palestinians attack them, they'll be responsible for what happens in response and, contra LeeEsq's wailing, the world won't stop a single damn missile or artillery shell no matter how much intersectional whining they may do. Any Palestinian who, after Gaza, has any delusions that attacks won’t be met with absolute walls of explosives and shells is deranged.
A withdrawal, however it turns out, is something Israel can survive assuredly. But continued occupation? I look at how badly the Israeli’s polity has degraded and how badly their standing has eroded in the past couple decades and I can’t say with any confidence they can take another couple decades of it. Likud is working -hard- to make the Israel question into a partisan one and once that happens then all that’ll have to go wrong to fish Israel is for the timing to not line up.
Hmm does anyone recall how fast NC counts their votes? They're very eastern and if they count fast it could be a good bellwether state.
Hmm 538 in 2020 said:
"Timing of results
Initial results will come very fast, but the rest will take time. Election officials estimate that up to 80 percent of the total vote could be announced right after polls close at 7:30 p.m., including in-person early votes and all mail ballots received by Nov. 2. Election Day returns will then trickle out over the course of the next several hours (those results are expected to take longer than usual because equipment must be sanitized after polling places close). However, North Carolina counts absentee ballots that arrive as late as Nov. 12, so there will definitely be some counting for at least nine days after Election Day. The question is whether there will be enough late-arriving ballots to keep any races uncalled."
Yeah in a lot of these cases it often seems to be the administration figures or third party mobs on social media who go way overboard out of a combination of risk/conflict aversion, stupidity and derp.
Encouraging, but the Dems erosion among other population groups offers a countervailing cause for alarm since men without college degrees are thick on the ground in the swing states, always have been, and seem to be swinging to the GOP in ever greater numbers.
Well right now, polling wise, it looks like PA would be the most likely to flip red which also makes intuitive sense since Wallz is popular in MN and a lot of people in WI commute into MN to work so that support may well bleed over. I still think the blue wall states will hold though.
Sorry Lee, the internet is not going away. If it's any help, though, odds are that people are going to increasingly ignore the winger loons even though they're more visible. Though, first, the right will need to dislodge their own wingers from, ya know, their actual institutional cores.
Harris/Walz win with the blue wall: MI, PA and WI. I’m not confident about the new purple AZ or GA to be able to even to predict anything but red for them. https://www.270towin.com/maps/KmypG
I’d say the big surprises are that there aren’t any big surprises.
Dems take the House but the GOP seems very likely to take the Senate 50-49. Tester needs a miracle to win and we don’t have a replacement pickup for his seat.
No further assassination attempts- the SS has been tightening up and the two moronic loons who made the attempts didn’t get the kind of media attention or adulation that might encourage more moronic loons to try.
Question: this article seems to assume that aid provision and preparation has somehow been lacking, inept or insufficient as a matter of fact; why is this and why have both Democratic and Republican Governors of the various afflicted states been saying the opposite?
I think you're succumbing to romance yourself. A parent who's going to be pushing for school choice is going to have successful kids virtually no matter what school said kiddo is put in because that kid has parents who care about how they do in school.
Consider, if you will, one of the biggest and widest spread beefs parents had during the Covid years- it was that the schools were remote and they were remote for a long time. I will tap the sign again "Schools first order purpose is to safely warehouse kids while their parents work".
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
Yes, quite so.
"
The West would -LIKE- a formal deal because that's the cleanest neatest way to resolve things. Don't scoff at them for wanting that because you and the Israeli's and any person with a lick of sense WANTS a formal peace deal.
But what the overwhelming majority of people internationally will settle for is to just not have to think about the Israel/Palestinian matter much anymore. And even unilateral withdrawal will meet that need. The world wants wine but they'll settle for water; but Israel can't make the word accept salt or sand. It just won't work.
"
Well that's not at all a difficult question. Israel would say "You have the right of return to the Palestinian entity, go nuts, we'll be over here on our side of the green line dealin with all the settler nutters we had to drag kicking and screaming out of the West Bank". And that would be that.
Absolutely the online left and the arabists would yelp and scream. Absolutely -you- will be annoyed and enraged by their talk. But in the real world where it actually matters the matter would be settled.
"
"However if elections were held right now in the West Bank, Hamas would easily win."
That is enormous conjecture on your part based on polls which are, foundationally, talk which is, fundamentally, cheap. If the Palestinian masses in the West Bank truly wanted Hamas in charge Hamas would be in charge. Hamas managed to get in charge in Gaza in the first place because Gaza was a) isolated from Fatahs' power based -in the west bank- and b) because Fatah themselves were not very interested in governing/controlling Gaza and didn't put up much of a fight to retain it. Presuming that Hamas, especially a Hamas with the utter disaster of Gaza on their resume, could easily take over the West Bank is an incredible leap. There is a world of difference between telling a stranger on the phone “Yeah I want Israel to vanish into thin air” and actually choosing to put guys in charge who you know are going to get your house, your block and your entire community levelled.
Baked into the presumption of unilateral withdrawal is a recognition that the party unilaterally withdrawing gets to draw the lines. That is reality and the reality is that if Israel unilaterally withdrew Israel would draw the lines in manners that benefitted them the most which is to say that they'd incorporate all the settlements along the green line that they possibly could. Pretending otherwise is delusional and if the Palestinians and their supporters don't like that, well the alternative is to negotiate a mutual settlement with land swaps and agreed boundaries as well as the Palestinians agreeing that any "right of return" would apply only to returning to the new Palestinian entity and not Israel.
Likewise, with “mowing the grass”. If Israel withdraws the Palestinians can absolutely expect that if they host attacks on Israel, those attacks will be returned disproportionately. This is one of the core lessons of the Gazan withdrawal. Sharon withdrew Israel unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. The world gave Israel a virtual blank check with regards to Gaza for almost a full twenty fishing years as a result of that. Frankly, in my opinion, it was only the reality of the continuing occupation of the West Bank that caused that blank check to gradually expire. If Israel withdrew from the West Bank (unilaterally or not) I’d fully expect that international opinion towards “mowing the grass” would be to tell the Palestinians “you play stupid games you win stupid prizes”.
“The real question is whether Israel going to war occasionally and doing to the WB what it’s doing to Gaza is really a better solution than this corrosive settlement thing.”
Let us note, first, that Israel having to do to the West Bank what it did in Gaza is pretty much the absolute worst-case scenario for outcomes of withdrawal. With that being recognized let us analyse Israel’s position in that worst case scenario. In that scenario Israel is:
a) Demographically secure. A right of return is now utterly impossible. There is no grey zone Palestinian population that could potentially, in the future, be incorporated into Israeal. The demographic threat is over.
b) Reputationally secure. The lesson of Gaza is very clear on this. Israel got 20 years of near carte blanche freedom of action towards Gaza after they withdrew. Israel can entirely survive even significant terror attacks from a worst case scenario West Bank. There is zero doubt of that. Israel can’t economically survive international isolation.
c) Ideologically secure. The identarian left was rocked back on their heels for a considerable period of time after the Gazan withdrawal. The only thing I’ve seen that resurrected it was the steady drum beat of settler idiocy and Israeli hypocrisy from within the West Bank. The plight of Palestinian refugees away from Israel and the West Bank just didn’t/doesn’t move the needle much. Even the violence in Gaza itself was a side subject. I just don’t think anti-Israeli sentiment can continue its march without the occupation to fuel it. There isn’t enough grist there. The further left will be anti-Israeli as long as Israel is on top but the further left cannot threaten Israels’ well being as a practical sense. It is only by extending anti-Israeli sentiment out of the fringes that it can be a threat and only the occupation is capable of motivating that extension.
So even the very worst possible outcome of a withdrawal with regards to the behavior of the Palestinians still leaves Israel in a better position than it is now. And Palestinians behaving in that worst case way would reap genuine repercussions that would hold out hope that their unambiguously suffering the consequences of their actions on the body of their own state would eventually change their attitude towards attacks on Israel. We have seen this exact thing happen in Lebanon- we have no reason to think it wouldn’t happen in the West Bank. Moreover it is overwhelmingly more likely that Fatah would remain in control and that the West Bank would not devolve into a worse case outcome.
Our really big problem is, as Lee notes, that Israeli’s themselves don’t want to withdraw as a matter of course. It used to be that they didn’t want to withdraw without getting assurances in return “we won’t endure the painful costs of unilaterally withdrawing without getting promises in return” but with the right ascendant in Israel right now they’re rapidly approaching a “we don’t want to withdraw, period.” State and that’s a brutal problem.
"
Well, let's be real here, the Palestinians wouldn't budge even if all the nattering nabobs on the internet said in a chorus that they should. I can assure you the Palestinians aren't deeply concerned about the opinions of people on twitter.
"
And I'd like to be able to flap my arms and fly coast to coast on the cheap. Neither of us are getting what we want.
"
Oh I understand it too. But if you think the Palestinians hate Israel and want it destroyed then the logical thing for them to do would be to refuse to make the symbolic gestures the Israeli's say they need to withdraw. Because any clear sighted student of real politic can see that continuing the occupation is the only plausible was of destroying the Jewish state.
"
If by punishing you mean saying bad things about them? Then yes. It's all talk and always has been when you're talking about that crew.
"
You know what would get Israel unentangled from the west bank with absolutely no hope of a right of return? Withdrawal. And you can't pretend, Lee, that the ascendant political coalition in Israel doesn't, nakedly, want to keep the West Bank territories.
"
Except Israel already has terror camps set up around it and they survive just fine. What they aren't surviving, just fine, is the occupation in the West Bank which is steadily and relentlessly undermining their long-term standing. The occupation is basically a government subsidy subsidizing the most right-wing loons in their society to turn Israel into South Africa (but without all the primary resources).
As for the Palestinians? The occupation is functionally a responsibility subsidy for them too keeping them completely without agency. If Israel withdraws and the West Bank Palestinians attack them, they'll be responsible for what happens in response and, contra LeeEsq's wailing, the world won't stop a single damn missile or artillery shell no matter how much intersectional whining they may do. Any Palestinian who, after Gaza, has any delusions that attacks won’t be met with absolute walls of explosives and shells is deranged.
A withdrawal, however it turns out, is something Israel can survive assuredly. But continued occupation? I look at how badly the Israeli’s polity has degraded and how badly their standing has eroded in the past couple decades and I can’t say with any confidence they can take another couple decades of it. Likud is working -hard- to make the Israel question into a partisan one and once that happens then all that’ll have to go wrong to fish Israel is for the timing to not line up.
"
Sure, but you're still talking about a generally powerless fringe- albeit one not quite as fringy and small as it used to be.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The 2024 Presidential Election”
Ahh so it may be slower. Drat.
"
Hmm does anyone recall how fast NC counts their votes? They're very eastern and if they count fast it could be a good bellwether state.
Hmm 538 in 2020 said:
"Timing of results
Initial results will come very fast, but the rest will take time. Election officials estimate that up to 80 percent of the total vote could be announced right after polls close at 7:30 p.m., including in-person early votes and all mail ballots received by Nov. 2. Election Day returns will then trickle out over the course of the next several hours (those results are expected to take longer than usual because equipment must be sanitized after polling places close). However, North Carolina counts absentee ballots that arrive as late as Nov. 12, so there will definitely be some counting for at least nine days after Election Day. The question is whether there will be enough late-arriving ballots to keep any races uncalled."
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
Yeah in a lot of these cases it often seems to be the administration figures or third party mobs on social media who go way overboard out of a combination of risk/conflict aversion, stupidity and derp.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The 2024 Presidential Election”
Encouraging, but the Dems erosion among other population groups offers a countervailing cause for alarm since men without college degrees are thick on the ground in the swing states, always have been, and seem to be swinging to the GOP in ever greater numbers.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
A pity, I enjoyed reading him in the glory days of the blogosphere when he blogged at the Atlantic.So... so... long ago. Ugh I need a drink.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The 2024 Presidential Election”
Well right now, polling wise, it looks like PA would be the most likely to flip red which also makes intuitive sense since Wallz is popular in MN and a lot of people in WI commute into MN to work so that support may well bleed over. I still think the blue wall states will hold though.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/30/2024”
Sorry Lee, the internet is not going away. If it's any help, though, odds are that people are going to increasingly ignore the winger loons even though they're more visible. Though, first, the right will need to dislodge their own wingers from, ya know, their actual institutional cores.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The 2024 Presidential Election”
I’ll start us off!
Harris/Walz win with the blue wall: MI, PA and WI. I’m not confident about the new purple AZ or GA to be able to even to predict anything but red for them. https://www.270towin.com/maps/KmypG
I’d say the big surprises are that there aren’t any big surprises.
Dems take the House but the GOP seems very likely to take the Senate 50-49. Tester needs a miracle to win and we don’t have a replacement pickup for his seat.
No further assassination attempts- the SS has been tightening up and the two moronic loons who made the attempts didn’t get the kind of media attention or adulation that might encourage more moronic loons to try.
On “Of Conspiracy Theories and Helene”
Question: this article seems to assume that aid provision and preparation has somehow been lacking, inept or insufficient as a matter of fact; why is this and why have both Democratic and Republican Governors of the various afflicted states been saying the opposite?
On “Port Strikes and Tariff Wars”
This is a huge relief.
On “Let’s face it: We knew that Harris would win back in August”
I so hope you're right.
"
Yes, I managed to get in before the second one so, in hindsight, my comment looks silly.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/30/2024”
I think you're succumbing to romance yourself. A parent who's going to be pushing for school choice is going to have successful kids virtually no matter what school said kiddo is put in because that kid has parents who care about how they do in school.
Consider, if you will, one of the biggest and widest spread beefs parents had during the Covid years- it was that the schools were remote and they were remote for a long time. I will tap the sign again "Schools first order purpose is to safely warehouse kids while their parents work".
On “Let’s face it: We knew that Harris would win back in August”
What the heck? Did this publish a month early? I need to go knock on wood and collect some rabbits feet or something!