Member Newsletter
As I’ve engaged with TPM Readers in response to yesterday’s Backchannel post and other recent posts on the same topic, I’ve been thinking again of the ‘big picture’ behind everything that is happening right now in Israel-Palestine. When I wrote about Students for Justice in Palestine a few days ago, I noted that that post was really more about North America than the Middle East. Activism frequently, although perhaps not always, tends to be more ideological at a distance than it is on the ground. People on the ground need to make practical and daily decision about living their lives. But as we watch this chaos and carnage and suffering unfolding from a distance, what remains the case is whatever Israel is trying to accomplish militarily, it will not amount to much if it isn’t followed by some political settlement. “Settlement” in this context probably sets up expectations too big and immediate, so much that it becomes self-defeating. So let’s say the beginnings of one. Because Israeli politics for the last fifteen years at least has been based on denial.
Many people think that the core of Netanyahu-ism is the settler movement and hawkish foreign policy. That’s wrong. They are both parts of his politics certainly. Perhaps the single clearest through-line to the man going back four decades has been opposition to the creation of any Palestinian state, regardless of its size and contiguity. But the real core of his politics during his first and especially his second lengthy runs of power has been the premise that the occupation can be perpetuated indefinitely with no unmanageable costs. Just a perpetual kicking of cans down the road, with neither annexation nor settlement, just management. And management which, to paraphrase Donald Trump, only he can accomplish.
That idea more than anything else is the one the massacres of October 7th exploded, though as I wrote a month ago, what comes after it is much less clear. That is what makes Netanyahu’s continuance in office so profoundly destructive, both for Israel and for the United States. Even if he is discredited he remains the one making the key decisions, not just today but also for a tomorrow his rule may not live to see.
We can see with great clarity now there can’t really be a discussion of “day after” questions until Israel gets to the “day after” Netanyahu’s time in power. But his very unpopularity keeps him and the members of his Knesset majority paradoxically locked in place. If he goes they all go, if not necessarily in their individual seats than in their collective hold on power.
I’m probably less convinced than I ever have been that ending the occupation of the 1967 territories will actually bring peace or normalization. At least not in the short run. But the denial of the last fifteen years clearly hasn’t worked.