The New Republic

A "two-state deal" IS impossible, until significant things change. First would be that the turbulent, ungovernable Pals find a way to leave the current rule by tribal mafias behind and start to resemble a people who actually deserve, and might be able to manage, a state.

I'm not holding my breath.

- Robert Powell

February 11, 2009 at 4:17pm

I don't buy Chait's comparison of the West Bank settlements with various Sinai and Gaza settlements and outposts.  Sinai is a desert - the people who moved there did it for ideological reasons, not (or secondarily at best) to make homes for their families, and they knew or certainly should have known they could be abandoned if the ideological worm turned as it did.  Gaza, same thing in spades.  Those folks purposefully moved into hotly contested war zones.  The West Bank settlements, however, are now largely suburban bedroom communities peopled by ordinary Israeli voters and fewer and fewer committed ideologues.  They can't any more be "uprooted" than voters in the Jersey or Northern Virginia 'burbs could be "uprooted."  So unfortunately this will all be way harder than Chait glibly asserts.

- rriley

February 11, 2009 at 5:39pm

Furthermore, Palestinian terrorism was a problem well before their were any settlements? In what year was the PLO founded, class?

Very good, class -- in 1964.

- rozenson

February 11, 2009 at 6:11pm

Err, that first question mark should be an exclamation point. No ambiguity on that one, folks.

- rozenson

February 11, 2009 at 6:22pm

I usually like what Chait has to say on this topic, but here he is unconvincing. I agree with rriley--the comparison to the settlements in the Sinai just doesn't work.  Anyone who's ever been to Ma'ale Adumim or Gush Etzion knows that these are deeply rooted, settled communities, sometimes populated with "ordinary Israeli voters" as rriley said, but also by a great deal of firmly committed ideologues.  And there are lots of them.  A serious withdrawal from the West Bank would certainly cause great unrest, if not civil war.

Of course, there are lots of other obstacles to peace beyond settlements, most glaringly the fact that the Palestinians have failed to get their "house" together.

- jyunis

February 11, 2009 at 6:26pm

One of the things that seems never to be considered is that settlements could remain where they are as part of Arab-majority Palestine.  It is peculiarly racist that everyone just assumes that Jews cannot be permitted to live, and could never live safely, as a minority in the Arab part of Palestine.  Why are the Arabs assumed to be entitled to ethnic cleansing that is otherwise totally unacceptable?  Where did they get a pass from? If that is so, one wonders why there should be any Arabs in the Jewish-majority part.  I have no doubt that the Jews would agree to return every square inch of what was captured in 1967 and repatriate every single settler if the deal including shipping all of the Israeli Arabs to Arab Palestine.  But that sort of ethnic cleansing is unthinkable, isn't it?

So, the question is not only whether the settlements can be uprooted to make peace.  They question is also why cannot the settlements simply remain where they are to make peace?

- roidubouloi

February 12, 2009 at 7:16pm

Roi asks perhaps the most important question in this entire debate. Why not indeed.

The answer, in my view, is that the Arabs got the "pass" for ethnic cleansing from the same place they got a similar pass dating from 1948, when they tried to wipe out a legitimate state as recognized by virtually everyone else in the world except them. Throughout history, if you launch a war of aggression and lose, as the Arabs started doing in that year, there are Serious Consequences. Ask the Germans, about ten million of whom were expelled from various parts of Europe around the same time. Various actors, most significantly the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia initially, and more recently Iraq, Iran, and to a lesser extent the EU and the UN, have invested billions of dollars and inestimable amounts of propaganda to sell the idea that the "Palestinians" are due a sort of special justice available to no one else.

I don't see any reason Israel should not demand that Jews who choose to live in Arab Palestine be given exactly the same rights currently enjoyed by Arab Israelis. Problem solved.

- Robert Powell

February 13, 2009 at 4:20pm