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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Israel Election Was a Referendum on the Two-State Solution | |
| 2015-03-19 | |
| by Spengler [PJMedia] Ha'aretz
IMO, not even them: they vote this way because it's the proper progressive ritual, and hope (secretly) to be outvoted. most Israeli voters look at the chaos in the Muslim world and draw the obvious conclusion that a Palestinian State would be absorbed into the maelstrom of extremism surrounding it, and turn into an artillery platform for terrorists. Last July I argued in Tablet magazine that it's not the settlers, but the "unsettlers" (ISIS and Iran) who have forced a one-state solution on Israel. Netanyahu went through the motions of diplomacy until Monday in order to maintain correct relations with Washington. That pushed the one-state vote out to minor parties. Once Netanyahu acknowledged the obvious, 200,000 minor party voters came back to Likud. Netanyahu has decided, with some justification, that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. His disagreement with the Obama administration is not about the best way to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Obama administration views Iran as a positive force with benign motives: the Director of National Intelligence's Threat Assessment speaks of "Iran's intentions to dampen sectarianism, build responsive partners, and deescalate tensions with Saudi Arabia," and dismisses Iran's threat to regional stability as mere "secondary consequences" of its support for Shia communities. Iranian official propaganda quotes it with enthusiasm. And after the appointment of Robert Malley as the Middle East Coordinator for the White House--the man Obama kicked out of its 2008 campaign because of his close ties to Hamas--Netanyahu has little to lose in terms of good will. | |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |