,
5 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
This has come up quite a bit in response to my piece (theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…), but I'm not sure I understand it. Why would Palestinian dignity necessitate Israeli suicide? According to most polling, a majority of Palestinians would have been okay with a two-state solution
The view that a Palestinian state (West Bank, Gaza, E.Jerusalem) would be an existential threat to Israel seems to assume certain things about the nature of the new state. Those assumptions are based on the Gaza experience, but that's why unilateral disengagement is a bad idea
And, in any case, to argue that a people should be denied both their right to self-determination as well as their basic dignity based on a speculative fear—which is itself contested—is, I think, an untenable moral position
I heard variations of this repeatedly: If Palestinians get the West Bank, militants might start lobbing rockets. But there will never be a way to reduce this (or any) risk to a probability of zero, and it seems Israel's position is: even if there's a 1% chance, we're not doing it
As for the question of whether Hamas would start lobbing rockets from the West Bank, well, that's precisely why I think most observers now acknowledge that Hamas would need to (somehow) be part of any deal. Otherwise, they will play spoiler
