John "The Israel Lobby" Mearsheimer isn't shying away from controversy. He says he sees four options for Israel/Palestine -- A two-state solution, a binational solution, the expulsion of the Arab population from a Greater Israel, and the construction of a Greater Israel governed along apartheid lines -- and that he thinks the apartheid outcome is the most likely one. He says Israeli leaders, despite agreeing to the UN partition plan, have never been interested in seeing the creation of a viable Palestinian state and he includes Yitzhak Rabin (though he says the Palestinians got "tantalizingly close" to a viable state at Camp David and Taba) in that category.
To Mearsheimer, the key point is that the mainstream Israeli view would create a Palestinian state that doesn't control its own airspace, its own borders, or its own water supply -- conditions that he says don't create the basis for a viable state. I don't imagine you'll see any of the Democratic politicians stopping by the conference tomorrow endorsing these views or anything like it.
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While we're playing fantasy foreign policy, why not consider retroceding the West Bank to Jordan, and provide some sort of considerations for getting to the Gaza strip? Wouldn't that be preferable to the "apartheid state" solution?
Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | August 3, 2007 6:05 PM