Only If We're Stupid Enough To

The adage “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a way of life in the Middle East. In a similar vein there are occasions when your ideological opponents make your job easier.

Tony Judt has done that in an Op-Ed in today’s times where he dccries the possibility that West Bank settlements will ever be evacuated [see excerpt below. If you want to read the rest of the article, go to the link; I don’t fell particularly obligated to reprint his spurious allegations about the “legality” of Jewish civilians living East of the Green Line, despite the elevations of said allegations to truisms.]

Where mine and Judt’s premonitions—if not hopes—intersect is this:

There will never be a “contiguous”, “viable”, “Palestinian State” comprising the two distinct unrelated geographic entities of Gaza and the West Bank—as long as the Israelis aren’t stupid enough to create it themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22judt.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th&adxnnlx=1245672177-7tRWY 5da1m9/BS82Mmt3Q

excerpt from Fictions on the Ground By TONY JUDT June 22, 2009

Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth.

The reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait — uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else.

However, the real question now is whether President Obama will respond in a similar vein. He surely wants to. Nothing could better please the American president and his advisors than to be able to assert that, in the wake of his Cairo speech, even Mr. Netanyahu had shifted ground and was open to compromise. Thus Washington avoids a confrontation, for now, with its closest ally. But the uncomfortable reality is that the prime minister restated the unvarnished truth: His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel’s land-grab in “Judea and Samaria.”

...[I]f I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel’s settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of “authorized” settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel’s political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster.