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Palestinians don't have Israeli citizenship and vote in Israeli elections because they are citizens of the state of Palestine and vote in Palestinian elections. This complaining is like whining that Canadians cannot vote in American elections. If Peter actually cared about authoritarianism, let's hear him say one word about the Palestinian Authority, which has the same dictator in power for decades and rules the Palestinians with an iron fist.

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“Citizens of the state of Palestine”

Did you type that with a straight face?

Canada is a sovereign state with a military, a government, international trade relations, defended borders, and is a full member state of the UN. Palestine is anon-sovereign occupied territory that only exists as a state on paper--non-member observer of the UN.

Sure, Palestinians can vote in PA elections. They can probably also vote in their local HOA--maybe in selecting the make/model of bulldozer that will demolish their home.

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Let's give the hard working Palestinian people some credit, Paul. They started with basically nothing from the Jordanian occupation and built from the ground up a state, complete with government, courts, infrastructure, schooling, trade relations, transportation, police, etc. If you think the state of Palestine doesn't exist, you simply have no idea what you're talking about.

Germany and Japan didn't cease to exist after the Allies occupied them. I have no idea why you and Peter seem to think the state of Palestine doesn't exist just because it's occupied. That flies in the face of history and common sense.

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Germany and Japan were sovereign states that came under military law during a temporary occupation following a state of war. Those occupations ran their course and full sovereignty was restored.

The Israeli government’s stated policy is annexation of the West Bank—“not if, but when”—there is no intent to ever end the occupation and grant sovereignty. And at least under Jordanian occupation prior to 1967, West Bank Palestinians were offered citizenship—some thing Israel refuses.

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The Israeli government has never stated a policy to annex the West Bank and conversely has offered to end the occupation multiple times, only to have their offer rejected by Palestine each and every time. All you guys know how to do is lie.

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The only reason there isn’t a sovereign state of Palestine is because the Palestinians have rejected every peace negotiation to create one over 70 years. It’s pretty basic: 1) accept Israel’s right to exist; 2) accept a separate Palestinian state next to Israel; 3) agree that the only “right of return” is to the new state of Palestine.

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Personally, I believed the narrative about Palestinian intransigence being the primary cause of the breakdown of peace talks in 2001. But in the 20 years since watching right-wing Israeli domestic politics I’ve come to understand why Israeli negotiators had little credibility with the Palestinian side. They were never, ever, ever, ever,ever going to give up Judea/Samaria. Any Israeli PM who sincerely made concessions would not stay in power long enough to see them through and/or to prevent their reversal. Whereas the bargaining chips the Palestinians had were non-tangible, more ephemeral claims —once a right of return was ceded, for example, it could never really be reclaimed.

It’s like if a homeless guy walks up to your table at the restaurant on the courtyard and offers you $10,000 for the delicious steak dinner on your plate. He makes his promises, but his sincerity and ability and intent to deliver on them after the fact is another matter.

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Bill Clinton, and indeed the Saudi‘s at the time called Arafat a criminal for reneging, said that a deal was in hand at the Camp David negotiations. Both negotiating teams were in agreement. The Israeli Prime Minister was in agreement and then out of the blue Arafat said no deal, came home and launched the Intifada. There was another attempt at Taba which ceded even more to the Palestinians. Again, no deal. And again another wave of murder against innocent Israelis.

It’s understandable that the Israeli electorate has shifted right given the Palestinian unwillingness to accept having their own country and insisting that one day all of Israel will be theirs. To this day, Abbas says one thing in English which sounds promising, but then turns around and in Arabic says the opposite to his people. The onus is now on the Palestinians not the Israelis. If and when they truly want peace, the three point prescription above would go a long way toward achieving a two-state solution. But as long as they continue to teach their children to hate, the only ones losing out are the Palestinians themselves.

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Jul 12, 2022·edited Jul 12, 2022

Yes, I’m familiar.

That’s the Camp David narrative I believed in 2001 but have since become more skeptical.

It’s not that I think it’s entirely wrong, it’s just incomplete. The many foibles and failings of Yassir Arafat distract from other deeper and lasting lessons. The rejectionist language one hears from the Israelis today is not altogether different in my view from the the Likudniks in Shamir’s and Begin’s days that long predate Oslo. Nor is it isolated to the right—to his dying day, PM Rabin stated he never intended for there to be a complete Palestinian state. Maybe we in the west should have recognized the futility of attempting coercion of the Israelis and believed their leadership then as the Palestinians seem to have always done? It certainly looks to me like it was all bullshit. And that was when US leadership was willing to apply pressure on Israel.

Regardless, I think the peace camps on both sides have been completely discredited. Abbas is speaking to his patrons in the Arab world who want a revolutionary figure and, the west and the international community having failed him, obliges them. It’s the only card he has left to play and is all part of the farce the peace process has become.

In my view, the Oslo-based two-state solution is dead and the one-way ratcheting of settlements and selectiva and peacemeal annexation will make the one-state binational solution inevitable. The Palestinians and the international community will be fine with this outcome, but perhaps not Jewish Israelis. So I would disagree that the onus is all on the Palestinians to invigorate a new peace process.

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Jul 12, 2022·edited Jul 12, 2022

I highly doubt the Beinart-promoted one-state plan would ever fly. Even if the Israelis were to accept it, the Palestinians would not. And, as we've seen this year in the Arab-Israeli towns when Gaza began launching missiles at Israel, the 5th column risk of attacks from within surged. The obstinate Beinart/Palestinian narrative that Israel must change isn't going to fly. Israel is in the driver's seat and the Arab world (that never actually did anything to support the Palestinians except the barest of lip service) are moving/have moved on. The Palestinians are the ones that need to change. What they need is to rid themselves of their corrupt, duplicitous leaders and embrace a leader who understands that living in their own country, side by side in peace with Israel, is the best path forward to prosperity. How and when that charismatic leader emerges, remains to be seen. 10 years ago, no one would have predicted an MBS in Suadi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel, and he's all but done so and likely to officially do so soon. And the losers in the status quo: the Palestinian people.

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Talk about sincerity from the guy who lied and said that the Israeli government has a "stated policy" of annexing the West Bank. That's hilarious.

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I wasn’t at the negotiating table, Winters, so my sincerity on the matter is immaterial.

As for the annexation claim, you seem to be playing “gotcha” with the specific “stated policy” assertion. Whether it’s stated government policy or stated intent by elected officials, the difference hardly matters. As we learned on the settlement project, what is official stated policy and what is de facto Israeli government policy are often quite divergent. What politicians tell their constituents about what they intend to deliver is the only useful and constant metric.

The “when, not if” line about annexation I used is a direct quote from Netanyahu. Former PM Bennett’s own Yamina party platform explicitly embraced a policy of annexation and Bennett’s detailed plans on the annexation of Area C were a matter of public record. All domestic political momentum in Israeli is on the right so even those positions will look comparatively moderate in 5 years and by then you’ll be parroting a different set of historical revisionist talking points

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"Whether it’s stated government policy or stated intent by elected officials, the difference hardly matters"

It makes a huge difference. One is a lie. The other is the truth. Which one did you say again? That's right, the first one. If it truly made no difference, say the truth the first time.

Oh wait, but you're not even doing that now, even after pivoting. Netanyahu said 'when not if' about annexing part of the West Bank, not the entire thing. Again, I'm sure in your mind that makes no difference, because you guys always put accuracy second to propaganda and talking points. Just tell the truth. What is so hard about that?

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Change the subject, change the subject, change the subject. Learn a new tune already. Let's hear you condemn the authoritarianism of the Palestinian Authority, Sean. Then maybe at least one person here will.

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Winters, is this really a concession you’ve not heard made? The Palestinian Authority is a corrupt and feckless organization that lacks much of any popular support is on the verge of collapse.

I’ve heard it said that Abbas is more hated in Ramallah than the Israelis and has come to be the human embodiment of the farce that the Oslo Accords have become.

The Fatah-led organization has been credibly accused by human rights groups of abuses, including torture and jailing without due process of suspected Hamas-affiliated individuals. If elections were held in the West Bank, Fatah would lose seats in a landslide and Hamas would take over the PA.

In their crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank, the Fatah-led PA has been cooperating hand-in-glove with the Israeli government. As gatekeepers of the occupation, it would be a crisis for the Israeli government if the PA collapsed or fell into Hamas control. So it’s really hard to believe you’re particularly sympathetic to the plight of the victims of PA authoritarianism.

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Well done, Paul. You finally brought yourself to criticize Palestine. Nice job. If only Peter could have done the same.

I'm extremely sympathetic to the plight of the victims of the PA's authoritarianism, a heck of a lot more sympathetic than the people who prioritize destroying Israel over the welfare of Palestinians. If the Palestinians had leadership and supporters that actually prioritized the people over the war to destroy the Jews, they and really the entire world would be much better off.

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I’ve got no time for the PA, because they are just puppets of Israel. Don’t you agree?

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I don't agree, I don't consider the PA a puppet of Israel. Your failure to condemn authoritarianism is noted and will be remembered the next time you criticize the Jewish state.

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Roll your shoulders and get in to it, Winters.

https://www.hkw.de/en/app/mediathek/video/91258

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Change the subject, change the subject.

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Jul 12, 2022·edited Jul 12, 2022

“Nothing is stopping relations with Israel… and I think all the signs show that Israel can be part of Saudi Arabia’s network of connections.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/youll-see-interesting-things-us-hints-at-new-arab-israel-ties-during-biden-trip/

Peace is readily achievable between Israel and Palestine when Palestinians 1) accept Israel’s right to exist; 2) agree to a state of their own next to Israel; and 3) agree to a “right of return” to a new state of Palestine and not to Israel. For over 70 years there have been numerous formal and informal efforts to achieve a two state peace, but all have ended with Palestinian rejection.

More and more Arab countries are refusing to be held hostage by Palestinian intransigence and are normalizing relations with Israel. Your activism should be aimed at the corrupt and criminal Palestinian leaders who continue to teach children to ‘drive the Jews into the sea.’ Hopefully one day they will instead choose peace so that both peoples can thrive.

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Palestinians have citizenship in the country in which they live, Palestine. Beinart is now straight up denying reality by refusing to accept the existence of the State of Palestine, a country which is a member of the United Nations and dozens of international treaties. I suppose we can look forward to Beinart's next post: "There's no such thing as the state of Palestine"?

I wonder what Beinarts reaction would be if a Republican President said “Palestine doesn’t exist” and then introduced a UNGA resolution calling for its removal from the UN? Somehow I think the tune would change.

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It’s as if one is talking to a wall. What “State of Palestine?” The one he described above requiring Israeli approval for every normal act people need to survive? Is that what you call a “Palestinian State?” Palestinians are divided into separate groups with separate “rights,” none of which are anything approaching equivalent to the rights afforded there for Jews. Many cannot see their own families or relatives due to being in the “wrong group.” Is this a “state?” Or a state of oppression? Declaration of a Palestinian State in the UN was an attempt to show the aspirations of Palestinians but is not an actual state on the ground with anything approaching sovereignty. They’re allowed to repress their own ppl if they like, of course, in the case of Hamas. But they can’t lift the shackles imposed by Israel, and the Palestinian authority doesn’t have “authority” to change basic laws. Protecting the “Jewishness” of Israel is the “sacred” principle that distinguishes Israel from a democracy in the commonly-understood sense. It’s a democracy for Jews, and committed to keeping Palestinian “demographics” from interfering with that principle by any means necessary. Lift that, and genuine peace and democracy become possible. All other arguments are beating around the bush.

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So you think Palestine should be thrown out of the UN by its ear?

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Seriously? Is that what I said? I only said that being in the UN does not confer the benefits of statehood in the sense all nation-states have. It’s important as a symbol but on the ground the situation is oppressive to say the least.

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So I guess we have our answer to your question earlier when you asked “What State of Palestine?”

No one says that Palestine has the full benefits of statehood. Murder and terrorism has consequences. But the fact remains that it is a state despite these drawbacks, recognized by the vast majority of the world and the UN, and Beinart needs to stop claiming that it isn’t just because he thinks it serves his argument.

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You’re trying to clear the speck from my eyes without seeing the logjam in your own eyes. “Murder and terrorism” describe a considerable degree of what Israel does to the Palestinians but without consequences. That’s because it’s state-sponsored terrorism in the form of, for example, snipers on rooftops taking potshots at Palestinian men suspected of the crime of being Palestinian men. And the rooftops? Palestinian homes commandeered for this purpose. Just one little sample. But it’s not terrorism because Israel defines terrorism as something other people do, never Israelis and if you say Israelis do it you’re antisemitic. You need to stop claiming that what Israel does to Palestinians is justified just because you think it serves your clearly self-serving and immoral argument.

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Diatribes against Israel isn’t going to change the fact that the State of Palestine exists.

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What a bunch of sweeping generalizations and accusations. I assume that you are no better at Math than Pramila Jayapal, who held up Biden’s bill forever last year and thus as a result Virginia went Republican. Its astounding to think the Democrats, let alone Biden, had a chance to get the liberal or progressive agenda through congress without having a Roosevelt majority. Especially considering that the Republican strategy in recent years is to just block anything the Dems want to do.

I personally think it is silly for Biden to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia and particularly foolish to go and bow down to MBS in the hopes that he will lower the price of oil (it would be meaningless anyway). We and Europe would be better off expanding the LNG facilities in Egypt to export gas to Europe and build a pipeline to Europe from the eastern Mediterranean. But we are not happy with Egypt’s government either.

As for Israel. I am amazed how you totally buy in to the false narrative that it is Israel alone or primarily is responsible for the sorry situation the Palestinians are in today. Your write Israel “expelled”. Do you even recall the 75,000 one percenters who took off immediately in 47? All the Palestinians that found themselves on the wrong side of the 1948 armistice line are there because they were expelled by Israel? No one else played a role? No one left of their own accord? No other countries participated?

There were no less then 3 firm proposals for partitions. What if the Palestinians had accepted the 1947 Partition plan? Would they have been refugees today? Now I recognize that the Arab states mostly spoke for the Palestinians and did not believe in a Palestine, and they were cock-sure that they could push the Jews into the sea and takeover some prime real estate for themselves, after all it is they who rejected partition. They didn’t even vote for resolution 194 because it would mean recognizing Israel as a state. And literally every time these guys went to war, they lost more ground from the prospective Palestinian state. Is that Israel’s fault too?

There were plans to hand over 96% of the west bank in 2000 under Clinton and Barak, including parts of the Old City when Arafat said no. And Olmert came close a few years later.

I remain amazed by this piece.

Finally, lumping all Palestinian Arabs together and to state that Israeli Arabs are just slightly better off is an outrageous lie.

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“ There were plans to hand over 96% of the west bank in 2000 under Clinton and Barak, including parts of the Old City when Arafat said no. And Olmert came close a few years later.”

For decades, Israeli governments, pursuing the colonization of the entirety of “Eretz Israel,” have systematically destroyed the prerequisites for a solution involving a contiguous, sustainable, sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Nevertheless, the myth that a real Palestinian state is on offer, and that there actually is a genuine “peace process,” endures as one of the greatest examples of magical thinking in modern times.

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Is this a soap box speech or an answer? Are you denying my quote is true?

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Absolutely.

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The Middle East 'peace process' was a myth. Donald Trump ended it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/18/the-middle-east-peace-process-myth-donald-trump-ended-it

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You are kidding. never mind.

Trump? He wasn't around then; these were serious deals.

You are clearly a member of the club that refuses to see that Aba Eban was right when he famously wrote: "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". And boy, they offered deals going all the way back to the 1920s. all of them would have prevented their current situation, some of them could have even prevented a Jewish state.

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Jul 14, 2022·edited Jul 14, 2022

President Joe Biden blasted progressive fellow Democrats who criticize Israel, calling them “isolated and wrong” on Wednesday.

Hours after touching down in Israel on the first day of his Middle East trip, Biden said harsh critics of the Jewish state are misguided.

“There are few of them. I think they’re wrong. I think they’re making a mistake,” Biden told an Israeli TV channel. “And none are more wrong than Peter Beinart”.

(Ok, I added that last one 😉).

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Excellent article, thank you.

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I wonder sometimes if progressives ( including myself ) are being too idealistic. Are we really prepared for the consequences of a policy that focuses principally on human rights at the expense of economic interests? Are there examples in history of countries who pursued a values approach rather than narrow self interest? I raise this issue not because I am happy that Biden is going to Saudi and Israel but because any potential economic rewards are going to be minimal IMO when compared to the cost of continuing to appease 2 serial human rights violators. In other words, if the economic benefits were significant ( such as the Saudis agreeing to flood the markets w tons of additional oil ) thus reducing the possibility of a recession would the trip be somewhat acceptable even if the cost is more human rights abuses?

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If we don't prioritise the environment over "economic interests", human civilisation as we know it, and much of nature, will be doomed. It may be idealistic to imagine a system where humans are in control, or at least can live in dignity and with the basic human rights, rather than being servants to an economic system driven only, in the last analysis, by profit and no other human value, but surely it is a challenge we must accept. It won't be easy, but accepting the worst impulses as a given doesn't seem great either.

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Excellent article Peter on the all talk, but no action Joe Biden.

BTW: I enjoyed your session at the Berlin conference, and I am working my way through the other sessions.

It was also refreshing to view and listen to Alice Garcia, Layla Kattermann, and Itai van de Wal, in the panel discussion in the Netherlands on the silencing of voices critical of Israel.

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Jul 11, 2022·edited Jul 11, 2022

"Israel, which is a liberal democracy for Jews and something closer to a tyranny for most Palestinians" is true but not so much for Palestinian women who need an abortion. I was startled to learn after the Roe v Wade decision that apartheid Israel, notwithstanding its appalling record on Palestinian freedoms since the Nakba, has possibly the most liberal abortion laws in the world. Palestinian women in the Occupied Territories must travel to Israel. From the Health & Human Rights Journal, 9th Dec 2019:

"Palestinian women are vulnerable to the realities of occupation, as well as historically patriarchal social and legal structures... In the OPT, abortion is criminalized under articles 321–325 of the Jordanian Penal Code of 1960, which is derived from colonial French and Ottoman laws. According to this law, penalties apply to the woman seeking the abortion and all individuals and health care professionals who assist her in terminating the pregnancy. Article 8 of Palestinian Public Health Law No. 20, which was passed in 2004, states that in the West Bank and Gaza, abortion is prohibited by any means unless necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life, as proven by the testimony of two specialist physicians. Written approval from the pregnant woman and her husband or guardian must also be provided, and these records are kept for a minimum of 10 years."

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That's true, James. The Palestinian Authority has a number of medieval style laws on the books, of which its stance on abortion is only one. You'd never know that by reading Peter, though. Apparently he has nothing to say about certain authoritarian governments .

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And neither do you nor your fellow Zionists have anything to say about the decades of horrific oppression of Palestinian men, women and children since the 1948 Nakba. Israel's liberal law on abortion isn't any excuse.

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I've written quite a bit about the treatment of the Palestinians since the 1948 war they started, but the topic is authoritarian regimes today in 2022. No doubt in my mind Palestine is such an authoritarian regime. Wouldn't you agree, James?

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Your views on the glories of apartheid Israel have been aired here long enough. No thanks.

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And so just like Peter, when it comes to criticizing the racist authoritarian state of Palestine, you have nothing to say. How pathetically predictable.

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I think Peter made a mistake with the word 'descendants' here: "because Israel expelled them or their descendants and won’t let them return." Perhaps: ancestors, predecessors, or forebears? or rephrase.

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author

you're right

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