There are plenty of people on the Israeli left who do not hold Israel solely accountable for the lack of a two state solution and vehemently support Israel. It is wrong to put them in the same camp as those who adopt the Palestinian narrative, inherently support the destruction of Israel, presume Israel wrong and guilty a priori and are competing about who can most vehemently denounce Israel and Israelis.

I beg to differ somewhat on your post.

While a certain category of the Israeli left tried to build bridges with the Palestinian people, another one-well represented by the 972+ mag staff-fully adopted the nationalist Palestinian narrative, precluding any sort of self-determination for the Jewish people and blaming not only the Israeli administration-but the Israeli people as a whole-for the woes suffered for lack of mutual understanding.

The same ultra leftist go complaining about the distrust their fellow citizens have for them and rely on the self-proclaimed “progressive”opinion .

I am not forgoing the 2-states solution.However, I have to point out the negative effect to any solution at all of this ultra-left camp (if it can be called ultra left at all).

This garbage about the supposed non-viability of a Palestinian state without Maale Adumim and Ariel is just something that gets repeated so often that people don’t bother to think it through. Then there is the canard about a contiguous Palestinian state while under the best circumstances it has no choice but to consist of two completely disjointed parts in Gaza and the West Bank. How can contiguity be a criteria for judging the ‘viability’ of a Palestinian state when no contiguity is even remotely possible?

The Israeli left and other supporters of the Palestinians are just trying to rationalize the reasons why the Palestinians reject perfectly decent and workable territorial offers that would leave them with a state. Were they to accept that the stumbling blocks are not territory or statehood they would be forced into accepting that the Palestinians are not capable of accepting an offer under conditions that would leave the state of Israel alive. This would be too depressing for them to contemplate and so in the interest of psychological self-defense they need to construct elaborate justification for why the Palestinians reject reasonable offers and still manage to fail in presenting a convincing case.

You can recruit entire political parties with scant evidence of any brain activity.

More seriously, in what sense are the settlements necessary for Israel? Bonding with imaginary friends and ancestors?

Question: What percentage of the mass of the human body is the brain? The heart? Only a few percent. Maybe a person can do without that small percentage?

Regarding the “viability” of a Palestinian state….even if they had all the territory that Jordan occupied before 1967 on the West Bank and Jerusalem, this Palestinian state would be “unviable”. A Palestinian state will be permamently dependent on international handouts. The territorial issue is irrelevant. In any event, if there should be real peace and quiet, the Palestinians would be able to have free access anywhere in their territories and Israel proper, as was the case during the pre-Oslo “occupation” period.

The Israeli Left is being to realize that there is NO possibility of a compromise agreement acceptable to Israel. Any such “concessions” Abbas has hinted to, such as restricting the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees are meaningless and are made for propaganda purposes…to make him seem “reasonable” to the Western moneybags who prop up his corrupt regime. HAMAS will have a major say in any negotiations and they aren’t going to let him make these concessions. Arafat told Bill Clinton at Camp David he would be assassinated if he made concession in the RoR or other crucial Palestinian grievances, and if the legendary “father of the Palestinian Revolution” couldn’t make these concession, certainly an unpopular non-entity like Abbas, whose party was wiped out in recent local elections on the West Bank certainly has no mandate to make these concessions.

There is always the hope of a Nixon to China from the right, but the material logic of the settlements and IDF control seems unstoppable. Even with a Palestinian State, Israel will need boarder control at Jordan; at best, then, they are talking about a federated, secondary State. I understand the Israeli logic (quite apart from the settlements) and cannot see any real change from them. The Israeli right will get what it wants, then will realize they have an occupied population which non but them consider to be someone else’s problem.