Posted 12:34 AM by Tal G
Response to "Cynical Joe":

Joe,

>I read in Haaretz the other day that 59% of Israelis were in favor of evacuating Netzarim. If 41% of Israelis are in favor of holding onto >settlements in the middle of Gaza, what percentage is going to vote for the evacuation of any settlement in the West Bank?

Did the poll ask about "now"? Or "under any circumstances"? Probably the former.

>Israeli minds seem to be closing on this issue,

On the contrary, I think people's opinions are remarkably static. That's one reason that there's less to blog about these days.

>if anyone even has the temerity to even discuss peace (Geneva accord) they are shouted down as appeasers, as disloyal, as idiotic.

Joe, I've written a lot about 'Geneva' and what people think about it (see below and the archives) - what you are saying is an unfair caricature. Noone had any objection to the Ayalon/Nusseibeh initiative.

> As doubt appears to creep into the IDF (pilot refuseniks, Yaalom), the group that has to keep up the oppression, the public demands that
>no protest be brooked, and to carry out the orders no matter how ultimately self-destructive they will be to Israel.

Again this is a caricature that's hard to respond to. I have respect for Yaalon, but not for the pilots - I didn't blog much on these issues due to being personally busy. They have a right to self-expression, but self-expression has consequences. But you take it as self-evident that these people are correct, which I think is a bit of a stretch since you are in Canada. I will try to write something about the pilots if I have time, but I think I linked to an article by Amir Oren that I largely agreed with.

>Two things seem to me to be constants. Peace never gets closer, Settlements never get smaller.
Yes

>I previously thought that Israel would
>trade the settlements for peace, that they were simply negotiating chips, but there never is any negotiating,

Rather: there hasn't been any since Camp David (or perhaps Taba)

>Israel will never negotiate
>under attack, but hasn't Israel been 'under attack' since '67 (or '48)?

I really don't understand your point here. At the current moment there are low-key discussions going on between the Israeli gov't and the PA. But 'Geneva'-type discussions are pointless until there is a Palestinian gov't that has at least a minimal amount of credibility.

>The simple facts are that in some ways you can't turn back the clock, if you rip up an olive grove to disrupt militants, what do you do with
>the olive farmers? They become unemployed, landless, disillusioned and radicalized.

>Then Israelis can't understand why most palestinians are in favor of terror, when 41% of them want to stay in Netzarim.
Sigh. We understand why they are in favor of terror, and know that withdrawing from Netzarim now won't affect anything.

>In Lilla's article
>about europe/zionism/and nation states, he informs his readers that moral corners may have been cut by Israel but it is not an established
>nation, but a young one still struggling and thus deserving of understanding if mistakes are made.

>But what then of Palestinians? People who would love to have a state of their own, who have lost control of their lives and land, what >accomodation should we make for their motives and actions? Should we judge them against the norms and standards of Western >democracies, against the standard of democratic Israel? or the example of other Arab nation states?

This argument was the assumption of Oslo, and especially Camp David/Taba. But these days the issue is exclusively pragmatic.
The PA controlled a lot of the West Bank. They used it to send in suicide bombers on a daily basis into Israel. The IDF went in
and reconquered the West Bank. If the IDF leaves, the Palis will do the same thing all over again. They don't claim differently.
Believing otherwise is the definition of insanity.

Lilla said lots of things about the Euros that are pretty interesting (and more original).

>You know what, maybe the Geneva accord is a huge waste of time and paper, but what are
>the SUBSTANTIVE criticisms of the thing

OK. As I've written before, Beilin and co. said they were going to mail it to everyone, but they never did. Instead they're running around the Europe trying to get the French and Belgians to ram it down our throats. Based on news reports, the biggest problems in my opinion are: 1) the ambiguity about the solution to the refugee problem which I wrote about below. Some have interpreted the contradiction to mean that Israel really has no requirement to accept any refugees at all, but Palestinian sources immediately rejected that interpretation. 2) border crossings are to be managed by "international forces". These would bend over backwards so as not to offend the Palis or the terrorist groups - just as UNIFIL does with Hezbullah 3) all disputes are to be resolved by an international authority. This would probably be about as fair as the UN's anti-racism conference in Durban 4) Israel is supposed to pay some amount of compensation for Pali suffering, but the amount is TBD.

>what are the compromises that Israel is prepared to make, and please don't tell me that they're willing to go back to pre Intifada times of
>benign occupation,

Who ever said that? There's probably a hypothetical consensus in favor of the Camp David proposal or variations thereon (though not Taba because of the refugees issue). Obviously the Pali response of the past 3 yrs. has made people extremely cautious about even that. Bret Stephens of Jpost said that if the Israel-Pali border could be like the border with Jordan, he'd be in favor of relinquishing 95% of the West Bank; and if it could be like the US-Canada border, he'd be in favor of relinquishing 100%. The Clinton/Camp David proposal assumed a US-Canada kind of goodwill which even then did not look realistic. But anyone sane can see that without a drastic change in the PA, the Israel-Pali border would resemble the Israel-Lebanon border before 1982. The line that "once they get part of what they demand, they'll change" is always assumed, but never argued for.

>what can Israel do to get a Palestinian state established and then what can Israel do to make sure that Palestinian
>state THRIVES, that is the way to a better Israel.

I think you've hit an important point in that many liberals feel that Israel has the duty to do these 2 nearly impossible tasks. If the Palis aren't willing to do things like establish civil order, there's a limited amount that Israel can do to encourage it. Israel can't do for the Palis what the US is attempting in Iraq.