Having reviewed it I think she did herself no significant harm and potentially some good. We also can now bury and retire the nonsensical notion that Harris avoids challenging media encounters.
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Benyamin Netanyahu at the Likud Party conference in 2019
I'm very unsure. I think this may be a rare moment when I agree more with Chip than you. Trump has this visceral connection to a constituency of voters that other more Theilian and Republitarian politicians on the right so far seem unable to replicate. Those voters genuinely believe, for instance, that Trump won't allow cuts to safety net programs that impact them. Removing Trump doesn't automatically mean Vance would inherit their support or, more importantly, their entheusiastic support.
Great musings but I remain dubious about Texas. I guess I just don't know enough about the state to even begin to hazard a guess as to how the Dems would go about flipping it.
You also touch on the big question- what the fish does the GOP/Right look like post Trump? That answer will inform most future electoral questions for the Dems.
I agree, but no total victory, no total dictating of terms ala Allies post WWII. And this is without even considering the land question. If the US, and Britain had entertained significant designs on land in Europe post WWII that would have been a very different kettle of fish.
Maybe, but the primary and principle reason was not world opinion or changing moores. It was because A) Israel depended on the largess of western nations to make war and, most importantly, Israel absolutely, totally, was incapable of prosecuting a total occupation of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the territories the way the allies occupied Germany, Italy and Japan. Eshkol could have shoved a gun into every Israeli man woman and childs' hands and they still couldn't have done it. No total victory, no total dictating of terms.
And let us not forget that a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territories -IS- a victory by any rational measure of victories since Israel would, mostly by itself, be deciding what the final lines on the map would be, keeping what it desired and abandoning what it didn't want while making no concessions in return.
That kind of victory has always been impossible because Israel has never been capable of totally defeating her Arab neighbors. Smash their armies? Sure. but A) she could never do it without outside support which always made Israels' successes contingent on outside politics and B) Israel has absolutely never been capable of totally defeating and totally occupying her neighboring countries the way the Allies did post WWII. Absent independence and the power to occupy a total victory along post WWII lines is not possible. Nor, I'd hasten to add, would it have been desirable.
Very kind Dark. I am not gonna quibble on odds but I suspect history suggests the outcomes will be more muddled than your pessimism may suggest- for one thing once they actually have something to fight over it's entirely possible the Palestinians may just fight each other instead. It is the middle east after all.
Sure, but the Israeli's have started turning to a land grubbing derangement including their own underpants gnomes theories about how they get that land without the people on it that is new and very dangerous. The Palestinians ineffective absolute refusals can't endanger Israel beyond the degree that Israel permits it to threaten them. The Israels own demons, though, could kill their state stone dead. A world historic case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Eh, once the 15 million Palestinians in the West Bank have Israels' boot off their neck the dynamic changes a lot. Not to be crass about it but the Palestinian cause has never been unitary and once the West Bank is its own polity a great deal of FUIGM will set in vis a vis the refugees elsewhere. It also can't be emphasized enough that while the refugees can make a lot of moral and online noise they simply have very little ability to cause actual, real, trouble for Israel; enormously less than their relatives on the border can.
The point is that Israels' worst case scenario would still be, in terms of Israels' long term interests, better than their current state. There's a significant chance it'd be a -lot- better and even if it did turn out poorly it'd also have much better odds of improving. The occupation freezes everything in the Middle East in place to Israel's long term detriment.
And, I'd like to pointedly add, that the current occupation of the West Bank does little to nothing to prevent rocket fire from the West Bank into Israel. The people preventing rocket fire from the West Bank into Israel are predominantly the PA. The idea they'd do that -less- when they had -more- control of the West Bank is silly.
Rocket fires from the border cities into Israel. Israel flattens the launch site and ten blocks on every side. The Palestinians and the online humanitarians yelp. The world says "*Yawn*, what did you expect?" Some Palestinians yell "Allah Akbar!" but a lot more of them yell "You stupid fishers, what were you thinking?" The next time the Palestinians see some of their local loons fixing to launch rockets they start getting pissy, and not at the Israeli's.
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.
On “Group Activity: VP Kamala Harris Fox News Interview”
Having reviewed it I think she did herself no significant harm and potentially some good. We also can now bury and retire the nonsensical notion that Harris avoids challenging media encounters.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
I do think it has a lot of commonality with Christian Grift on the right, though I fear that nonprofits in general already have that space staked out.
"
Further evidence that the excesses of that ideology are in retreat.
"
I agree, it's encouraging.
"
Good, she should.
"
Me too!
"
So we're switching from "She's too scared to do interviews" to "She must be desperate to be doing so many interviews"?
"
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Benyamin Netanyahu at the Likud Party conference in 2019
"
I'm very unsure. I think this may be a rare moment when I agree more with Chip than you. Trump has this visceral connection to a constituency of voters that other more Theilian and Republitarian politicians on the right so far seem unable to replicate. Those voters genuinely believe, for instance, that Trump won't allow cuts to safety net programs that impact them. Removing Trump doesn't automatically mean Vance would inherit their support or, more importantly, their entheusiastic support.
On “Lone Star Rising”
Great musings but I remain dubious about Texas. I guess I just don't know enough about the state to even begin to hazard a guess as to how the Dems would go about flipping it.
You also touch on the big question- what the fish does the GOP/Right look like post Trump? That answer will inform most future electoral questions for the Dems.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
I agree, but no total victory, no total dictating of terms ala Allies post WWII. And this is without even considering the land question. If the US, and Britain had entertained significant designs on land in Europe post WWII that would have been a very different kettle of fish.
"
Maybe, but the primary and principle reason was not world opinion or changing moores. It was because A) Israel depended on the largess of western nations to make war and, most importantly, Israel absolutely, totally, was incapable of prosecuting a total occupation of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the territories the way the allies occupied Germany, Italy and Japan. Eshkol could have shoved a gun into every Israeli man woman and childs' hands and they still couldn't have done it. No total victory, no total dictating of terms.
And let us not forget that a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territories -IS- a victory by any rational measure of victories since Israel would, mostly by itself, be deciding what the final lines on the map would be, keeping what it desired and abandoning what it didn't want while making no concessions in return.
"
That kind of victory has always been impossible because Israel has never been capable of totally defeating her Arab neighbors. Smash their armies? Sure. but A) she could never do it without outside support which always made Israels' successes contingent on outside politics and B) Israel has absolutely never been capable of totally defeating and totally occupying her neighboring countries the way the Allies did post WWII. Absent independence and the power to occupy a total victory along post WWII lines is not possible. Nor, I'd hasten to add, would it have been desirable.
"
Very kind Dark. I am not gonna quibble on odds but I suspect history suggests the outcomes will be more muddled than your pessimism may suggest- for one thing once they actually have something to fight over it's entirely possible the Palestinians may just fight each other instead. It is the middle east after all.
"
Sure, but the Israeli's have started turning to a land grubbing derangement including their own underpants gnomes theories about how they get that land without the people on it that is new and very dangerous. The Palestinians ineffective absolute refusals can't endanger Israel beyond the degree that Israel permits it to threaten them. The Israels own demons, though, could kill their state stone dead. A world historic case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
"
Eh, once the 15 million Palestinians in the West Bank have Israels' boot off their neck the dynamic changes a lot. Not to be crass about it but the Palestinian cause has never been unitary and once the West Bank is its own polity a great deal of FUIGM will set in vis a vis the refugees elsewhere. It also can't be emphasized enough that while the refugees can make a lot of moral and online noise they simply have very little ability to cause actual, real, trouble for Israel; enormously less than their relatives on the border can.
"
The point is that Israels' worst case scenario would still be, in terms of Israels' long term interests, better than their current state. There's a significant chance it'd be a -lot- better and even if it did turn out poorly it'd also have much better odds of improving. The occupation freezes everything in the Middle East in place to Israel's long term detriment.
"
And, I'd like to pointedly add, that the current occupation of the West Bank does little to nothing to prevent rocket fire from the West Bank into Israel. The people preventing rocket fire from the West Bank into Israel are predominantly the PA. The idea they'd do that -less- when they had -more- control of the West Bank is silly.
"
Rocket fires from the border cities into Israel. Israel flattens the launch site and ten blocks on every side. The Palestinians and the online humanitarians yelp. The world says "*Yawn*, what did you expect?" Some Palestinians yell "Allah Akbar!" but a lot more of them yell "You stupid fishers, what were you thinking?" The next time the Palestinians see some of their local loons fixing to launch rockets they start getting pissy, and not at the Israeli's.
"
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.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.