Too many stuck on the "Judea and Samaria" delusion, as though 14 centuries of a Palestinian Arab majority are nothing and as though Palestinians have no real right to be there.

After 1967, the Israeli government should have left it at just bringing back the people forced out in 1948. In all likelihood, ordinary Palestinians could have lived with that-it was the Jordanians who expelled the indigenous Jewish community.


The Israel government should never have started the settlement project and forced Palestinians into an intolerable choice of going into exile or being forever powerless on their own lands.

Israel HAS a right to exist...but there is no possible way that asserting the right to live in the West Bank could possibly be more important than working for peace.

And if the Israeli do ultimately annex the West Bank, what possible right will it ever have again to claim to want peace? How can Netanyahu possibly imagine peace could come without the Palestinians having the right to self-determination?

Opinion polls aren't a refutation of objective reality.

How hard is that? And if they had annexed the West Bank, or if they do it now, then what of the Palestinians living there? Are they willing to grant those people citizenship? Even if they are willing to do that, is it a denial of Palestinian national aspirations?

That's my takeaway.

Is there an honest broker in Palestine? In the Middle-East? I've been a supporter of Israel all my life, but the last fifteen years find me standing on the sidelines. One question we might ask: our support of Israel has come with serious costs over the decades. But what exactly are the benefits?

Sending children into Israel to stab and kill Jews isn't how one negotiates.

True enough, but neither is settling someone else's country. This is what I mean when I say there are no honest brokers in Palestine.