Israel: What a fool believes

The sentimental fool don′t see tryin' hard to recreate

What had yet to be created . . .
What a fool believes he sees. . .
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
          Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, "What a Fool Believes," 1978

Democrats have a problem.

"No room for two states"

Democrats want a two-state solution in Israel. Israelis don't want it. 

Moreover, the Israeli settlements have made it impossible.

Democratic politicians are trying to find some sort of middle ground on the problem of Israel. A great many people retain some sympathy for Israel, a residual from the European Holocaust, refreshed by the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. But that sympathy has been strained and perhaps ruined by Israeli actions that are read as belligerent, racist, expansionist, dishonest, and manipulative. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, campaigning to hold his coalition together, bragged that his relentless effort, involving 1000 hours of persuasion, finally got the U.S. to join Israel in a surprise attack on Iran. This reaffirmed what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged, that Israel forced America's hand into going to war. Netanyahu had nurtured Trump into being ready to jump when Israel said jump. Trump jumped.

The war has worked out poorly.

Israel made it nearly impossible for a Democratic politician to have full-throated support for Israel. The country's actions in the West Bank and Gaza read as ethnic cleansing to a great many Americans.

Most Democrats voice a middle-ground position. The Wall Street Journal expressed it in an article on Pennsylvania's Democratic governorJosh Shapiro.

Mr. Shapiro is Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. At the same time, he favors a two-state solution, has been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies, and has spoken in general terms of using U.S. arms sales to Israel as leverage to change some of the Netanyahu government’s policies.

Here again, Mr. Shapiro seems to have found the point of equipoise.

The equipoise is based on a wish, not a reality. Gallup polling found that only 27 percent of Israeli citizens want a two-state solution.

The politicians with any chance of puling together a coalition to lead Israel don't want it either.

Netanyahu said in June:

The national government I intend to lead is that there is no room for two states between the sea and the Jordan River. Now if you ask me three years ago, before the war, the public was divided on the issue, although I believe most of the public was opposed. A significant portion supported it. I think that has changed.

Moreover, facts on the ground have changed. Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank made a coherent Palestinian state impossible. The "E-1" plan of settlements put corridors of Jewish settlement across the West Bank. The U.N. and European Union have protested, calling it "an existential threat" to a possible two-state solution, because it would "drive a wedge through the West Bank." An Israeli anti-settlement organization, Peace Now, has filed lawsuits trying to stop settlement expansion. They wrote:

The government is trying to sign contracts with contractors before the (upcoming October) elections so that it will be much harder for the next government to cancel the construction.

I expect Democratic candidates, including future candidates for president, to advocate a two-state solution. It is the sweet spot that tries to be supportive of Israel, of peace, of Palestinian aspirations, of the U.N., of the international community of nations, and most American voters. But it is a fragile message that I doubt will get a Democrat through the 2028 election, because it is built on a lie. Israel wants what it wants: an expanded, Jewish Israel, from the river to the sea. 

I suspect the Republican candidate for president to say the U.S. will help Israel get what it wants. Israel hitched its wagon to Republicans. Evangelicals see it as destiny and God's will. I expect the Democratic candidate for president to be put into anguish because the divides the party and American Jews, but the Israeli tie to Republicans will force Democrats' hand. Democrats will break from Israel and say they are on their own. They can voice it as their own version of America First and  Democras as the more authentic party of peace. 

Israel feels constrained by the tepid, ambiguous support it gets from Democrats, so this will be a painful breakup, a realignment within American Jews and between Jews and the Democratic Party, but it is not a surprise. The breakup has been underway for a long time.

She had a place in his life

He never made her think twice

As he rises to her apology

Anybody else would surely know

He′s watchin' her go

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