One more post on everybody's favorite subject

Part of the problem with any discussion of the Israel-Palestine issue is the conflation of, on the one hand, arguments over Israeli policies and, on the other, arguments with supporters (or critics) of those policies. This would ordinarily seem banal (and maybe is) except that this issue occupies a unique position in the mental architecture of people who spend a fair amount of time thinking about international politics.

It is for many people what the Spanish Civil War or Joe McCarthy was for previous generations: a lodestar that allowed you to define yourself politically (and perhaps not only politically). For neoconservatives and similarly hawkish types, support for Israel demonstrates a larger commitment to a firm anti-terrorist policy, as well as a bludgeon against what they perceive as the Antisemitism of the left and the paleoconservative right.

For Mr. Brzezinski and like-minded fellows the Israel-Palestine crisis is an opportunity (no the Chinese character thing is not true) for the U.S. to evince a kind of global leadership that has been lacking during the past eight years (though I can’t imagine him offering such an even-handed approach to, say, Russia).

Amongst Jews, alongside those who feel a natural concern for the world’s only Jewish state, you have a subset (exemplified by the recently-defined “Juicebox Mafia”) who are pleased to define themselves as “not that type of Jew,” via their open criticism of Israeli politics and effusive sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.

That’s just a few examples (and I’m not even going to open the can of worms that is the spectrum of European positions on Israel, apropos which I’m often reminded of Fyodor Karamozov’s remark about forever hating the man to whom he did a bad turn).

The point being, the Israel-Palestine conflict is almost never viewed in strictly geopolitical terms. Part of this is only natural, given the fact that a tiny area on the far side of the planet could only be of so much interest to us in such terms. Still, it might be useful to try looking at the actual map once in a while (map courtesy of my old employers — in Italian, but you can still get that gist).

This gives a much better sense what is meant by “crushing Hamas.” Or the idiocy of insisting that it is only because of Hamas’ strategic positioning that civilian lives are at risk in Gaza.

Similarly here’s a map of Israel. Take a look at it (and believe me, it’s even smaller when you’re actually on the ground). And figure out exactly how you would defend it if so charged. Now decide how much land you would give up and where. A hallmark of modern warfare is the necessity of strategic depth on defense. If you cannot afford to temporarily sacrifice ground, then you will be without defenses against modern firepower — as the Israelis certainly learned during the early days of the Yom Kippur War.

Critics of the offers made at Camp David and Taba are almost certainly correct that the offers were nowhere near as generous as conventional wisdom in the U.S. might suggest: that the territory on offer was hedged with numerous Israeli buffer zones and so forth. That the result was a series of Palestinian Bantustans.

But would any such critics consider what is leftover from a more “generous” offer to be strategically defensible? By contrast, would critics of Palestinian nationalism consider what was on offer to provide a sound basis for a functioning state?

What’s more, Palestinian nationalism has by now mestastisized to the degree that it could not compromise on this point. Extreme measures almost require that they be undertaken in support of maximalist demands.

This, as I see it, is where things stand today. Everyone and their brother supports a two-state solution, but such a solution is so far out of hand as to be unrealizable in the foreseeable future. This may seem unduly pessimistic (though I don’t see why it should, given the facts on the ground), but it is the optimists who really worry me. The ones who inevitably insist that a judicious use of force can remove Israel’s enemies from the larger population of Palestinians. Or, on the other side, those who believe they know just the right territorial concessions that would bring about a peaceful resolution.

What is Israel to do then? Given that it holds the upper hand strategically, that its violence against Gazans primarily serves to strengthen Hamas, while benefiting Israel little, I believe that it has should avoid falling prey to the logic of total war, i.e., punishing entire populations for the sins of its leaders. Sometimes, this means doing nothing — as in the case of this most recent round.

That may not be quite what Jeffrey Goldberg meant in this post, but it’s what I thought of when reading it: that this latest round of violence will do little to change the balance, while adding more deaths to the roster.

As for ourselves, I don’t believe we should be spending precious political capital to try and resolve one of the world’s thorniest geopolitical conflicts, in which the chances of success are slim and the gratitude of its “beneficiaries” is hardly to be relied upon.

Instead of rallying behind the latest punitive action taken against Palestinians, or planning once again to use our leverage against Israel to pressure them into another round of negotiations, we should be considering how we might extricate ourselves from the position of Israel’s (and Egypt’s) creditor — which is of course another problem in and of itself.