Umm if Israel unilaterally withdraws from the West Bank then they'll first annex all the land along the boundary that they've already settled to the nines before dragging their wingnuts kicking and screaming from the more disconnected or far flung settlements. They obviously will take all of Jerusalem and its surrounding environs (as they generally already have) and every other choice bit they can manage to keep without annexing in very many Palestinians. Unilateral withdrawal means that the Israeli's will be drawing the lines mostly by themselves and exactly zero Israeli land will be given to the Palestinians in return. You can bet your bottom dollar the Palestinians, were Israel to do this, would be very unhappy about the ultimate map and outcome.

As for if the Palestinians keep advocating for the right of return? I have no doubt they will. So will the various far left identarians wing do the same. But neither of them will have any means of making what they want to happen- happen. The world will mostly tune out until/unless the West Bank Palestinians are actually dumb enough to attack Israel at which point Israel will move the attackers and likely every other Palestinian down in a couple block or maybe even mile radius, the left will scream genocide but the other 95% of the world will say "dumb fishers what did you think would happen" and tune out again.

And at some point, likely pretty quickly going by Lebanon, when a Palestinian gets word that someone in a one block or one mile radius of them is gearing up to attack Israel their response will not be "Allahu Akbar" but "Stop you dumb fisher, I live here, I'm calling the cops!"

And even if they don't? Israel can -easily- sustain an occasional attack from the Palestinians and deliver back a disproportionate retaliation. Because everyone everywhere who matters will be saying "Ya dumb fishers, what did you expect?"

Fair enough, good conversation.

And we don't disagree as much as one might think. It can't be denied that a negotiated withdrawal, an agreement or even merely a representative government worth its name that could actually speak to and for the Palestinians would be enormously superior to a unilateral withdrawal. You're unambiguously correct on that point. I simply do not have the idealism (or duplicity) to think that such an outcome is in offering in the foreseeable future. I think, if my cynicism is correct, that unilateral withdrawal is better, for all concerned (except the Israeli right-settler movement and their Palestinian terrorist Israeli-eliminationist counterparts but fish them), than a continuation of the status quos.

The Jordanians, the Syrians and the Egyptian men on the street populations all have the same attitude and their governments say the same thing and, yet, the Israelis seem to manage to get by without having any form of West Bank entanglement with them. Which brings us back to the base fact that the right of return question is simply an excuse Israel (primarily the Israeli right) uses to not make the hard decisions on the West Bank that they need to make. They could set their borders unilaterally at any time, they just claim to want to be given some promises in return for doing so.

As for Israel's activity in the West Bank... the uh... facts don't quite comport with your notions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624qr3mqrzo

Let's not dance around that issue which is that we both know that Israel got caught with their pants down on 10/7 and the 10/7 attacks were, accordingly, so destructive because the Israeli right had re-oriented the IDF away from Gaza to cover their activities in the West Bank. To put it even more starkly their idiotic and atrocious activities in the West Bank enabled Hamas's body and kidnapping count. Hamas remains, ultimately, responsible of course but the Israeli right, both in being a midwife of and enabler of Hamas and in redirecting the IDF and ignoring intelligence warnings unambiguously puts the Israeli rights as the chief contributing element to the 10/7 attacks.

The subsequent outcome, moreover, validates the unilateral separation policy since Israel was able to devastate both foes since they had little entanglement and no settlements or other insanely unethical attachments clouding the issue in the Gaza or Lebanon theaters. By virtue of the IDF's guile and determination as well as American ammunition Hamas and Hezbollah were decimated. The IDF is unlikely to run out of the two former elements but, again, the occupation of the West Bank is steadily eroding the Israeli's future assurance of access to the latter.

The dictionary definition (Though the definition itself is in some dispute) of ethnic cleansing is:
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

If you want to try to claim that now two decades of violent steady but gradual land expropriate and dispossession doesn't count as ethnic cleansing because, what, it's too gradual? I suppose you can but it doesn't strike me as a strong claim.

As for the right of return? It's a canard and we both know it. Israel will -never- permit the mass immigration of Palestinians into Israel proper and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. That the PA or other Palestinian representatives won't say the magic words that acknowledge that reality changes nothing except that the Israeli right uses it as a fig leaf excuse to enable them to continue their "it's only a little bit of" ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

We've been around and around on this and you eventually end up admitting the settlements and land theft are a massive problem and that Israel is nakedly wrong to be there and would probably be in better shape both reputationally and literally if they withdrew unilaterally. I don't want to rehash that.

I do want to observe that all the "justifications" you keep proffering occurred decades and decades ago, in many cases over fifty years ago whereas the West Bank Palestinians peaceable behavior is the literal current tense state of affairs for the past decade or two. That is either incoherent or contradictory.

Likewise with the respective governments and populations. Your assertions for Gaza are:
1: Hamas is the government of Gaza
2: Hamas attacked Israel
3: The Palestinians of Gaza didn’t resist Hamas or throw Hamas out thus they can be ascribed to approve of this attack and be of the same mindset as Hamas.
I think that’s reductive but, fair enough, we’ll go with it. But when we apply this -exact- chain of logic to the West Bank it utterly implodes.
1: The PA is the government of the West Bank.
2: The PA has maintained peacable de jeur relationships with Israel for many years now.
3: The Palestinians of the West Bank haven’t resisted the PA nor have they thrown the PA out thus they can be ascribed to… have the same attitude that the Palestinians in Gaza have because Dark Matter has some dubious polls and points at some things other Arab states did fifty years ago?!?!?!

It just doesn’t work. And on top of that we agree that the PA is undemocratic and corrupt which, somehow, also means that it is incredibly and secretly effective at suppressing all violent action from this population which is supposedly seething with violent attack now impulses for Israelis and has Israeli targets readily at hand.

And, then, this whole mess of contradictory reasoning somehow means that the Israeli rights’ land seizures, vandalism, violent attacks and exclusionary development doesn’t constitute slow motion ethnic cleansing?

Look, I repeat myself, I’m pro-Israeli and I still think the far lefts anti-Israeli postures are deranged but it is no mystery at all to me why Israel’s moral position is crumbling in the eyes of every non-Jewish group or every young person that looks at the matter or why the far lefts anti-Israeli posture keeps slowly growing in strength year after year. Because I do think you’re doing the best you can, Dark, regarding the West Bank and despite that this is pathetically weak tea.

Jews don't have to do anything with regards to the fringe left. As a friend of Jews and their state I'd advise them that, maybe, they should consider doing things that will prevent the anti-Israeli left from steadily growing and winning converts world wide. But the Israeli's, apparently, have decided they're going to double down on what they've been doing for years to empower the anti-Israeli left. I wish I had enough Jewish background to know what clever Yiddish phrase would apply to that foolish decision- I have no doubt there is one.

Sure to all that, but what I am referring to in the West Bank is not questions of ownership.

What I'm referring to in the West Bank is settlers and other right wing Jewish activists attacking Palestinians and driving them off their land with the either indifference or acquiescence of the Israeli military authorities and the forcible immobilization of any Palestinian authorities coupled with a steady development and expansion of Jewish only settlements in that same region with security barriers and Jewish only transport hubs to connect said settlements. When we also consider that it's no longer 2000 and the West Banks Palestinian administration has generally been cooperative with the Israelis and has suppressed anti-Jewish attacks (both within the West Bank and originating from the West Bank) the difference becomes even more nakedly stark. That said authority is corrupt and non-democratic is true but irrelevant. All this action by the Israeli right with the allowance of their government is undeniably ethnic cleansing. It's slow and gradual but that doesn't change what it is.

While I don't subscribe to the lefts wacky fringers or their deranged ideas about Israel proper we're very much long past the point where the actions Israel and her people are taking in the West Bank can be defended by pointing at past West Bank Palestinian choices (they've been largely peaceable for over a decade now) nor by pointing at the actions of other Palestinians or neighboring Arab states (that's empty whataboutism).

I, myself, and an Philo-Semite regarding Israel but when I watch the reputation of the Jewish state relentlessly but slowly eroding to my left I cannot, in any honesty, say that development is purely baseless anti-Semitism.

And while I agree that what Israel is up to in Gaza doesn't meet the bar of genocide or ethnic cleansing... yet. I find the very purposeful ignoring of what Israel is getting up to in the territories intellectually dishonest and borderline hypocritical.

It's not just betrayal but towering hypocrisy on the part of the leftier DEI and intersectionalists. It's also naked paternalism towards the Palestinians.

Okay so ethnic cleansing is okay so long as it's done by the Israeli's and it's done slowly. Gotcha.

*cough* The West Bank?

Thank you for confirming my suspicions because I have, over the years, read a number of Tablet articles (one about the politics of ultra orthodox public schooling funding in NY; another about the rabbinical background thought on biblical Noah) that were informative, thoughtful and deeply researched so this one really surprised me.

We miss you Em, I am just delighted to see anything from you. I hope you have a fantastic new year.

Assuming the same policies then GOP ineptitude would have killed notably more soldiers than the handful that the suicide bomber took out during Bidens' withdrawal. More likely, though, Trump would have reneged on withdrawing and continued the occupation and then astronomically more American soldiers would be dead and we'd still be in Afghanistan.

Looks like the GOP can get more done negotiating with the Dems than they can negotiating with themselves.

It got me to laugh a lot so it had some merit!

Conservative thoughts? That's got to be the harshest thing anyone has said about conservatives on this site in ages Jaybird. Well done.

The headline of this article, note, is "How Barack Obama Build an Omnipotent Thought-Machine and how it was destroyed" and I think that summarizes the tone and thought quality of the article well.

Agreed, she's an embarrassment.

Agreed. In the clear stark light of hindsight Biden should either have not run at all in 2020 in which case likely one of the other center laners or a centrist who sat out because of Biden would have gotten the nod and thumped Trump or he should have said he wasn't running again after the midterms.

It'd be interesting to see who the GOP tries to scrape up to be Speaker if Johnson gets the boot.

He threw a fit because it was a compromise deal that included Dem priorities and because it didn't include a debt limit increase. The nerve of Dems, not giving him everything he'd want and thanking him for the chance to do so. Heheh

On the part of Republican political actors? Probably. But on the part of our resident writers? No I think it's just wishful thinking.

If it's any consolation you can be sure they say the same thing about you.

My point is simpler than that my friend: it's that in these modern times even the liberal (not the left wing identarian but actual honest to god(ess?) liberal) stance on Israel involves a lot of nose holding and genuine moral struggle with regards to Israel. And that's because of the Israeli right. That's not something you can blame on the professors or the Arabs or the luntatic lefties- that's on the Israeli right.
You're angry because you remember a time, only a decade and change ago, when every thoughtful person was pro-Israeli and it wasn't even very close- well those times are past and I don't see many signs of them returning. That's something you're going to have to make peace with and hope that those cracks and chips in the surface vibes you feel aren't precursor tremors of a deeper, and much warned about, shift.

10/7 clouds the matter because Jews =/= Likud/the Israeli right and Likud/the Israeli right is bound up deeply in the 10/7 question and all matters Israeli. Moreover you, not to be too harsh, keep measuring this indicator by the discourse you read online rather than what is actually done by the lefts political actors in the real world.

Uh yeah, I meet that pre-req obviously.