Very informative post, Bernard. Thank you.

I have one suggestion about language. You say:

Multiply the Hebron problem by twenty, and you have the real, grotesque problem that occupation has engendered.

Strange though it might seem, the word "occupation" is itself a euphemism in this context, even though it is a critical term. An occupation is a military operation. But what you are describing is not a military operation, but an organized program of conquest and colonization that is assisted by military operations. There are US checkpoints in Iraq too, and military patrols. But US citizens are not being moved to Iraq to build homes and towns there, and gobble up territory for eventual official incorporation into the US homeland.

"Settlement" is equally inappropriate, and somewhat offensive, since it implies a process of converting unsettled wilderness into settled human communities. That is not what is happening. The land was already "settled".

I am determined from now on to use terms like "colonists", "colony", "colonized territories" and "colonization movement" to describe the reality of what is occurring in Palestine.

Chilling. But I don't derive much Biblical solace from the story of Abraham agreeing to split the land with Lot, since the latter, after all, was his nephew, so the land all stayed in the family.

The Israelis are in over their heads but I don't see any "world involvement". Whatever might happen (UN peacekeepers?) to correct the situation would be propagandized as an attack on a portion of the legitimate Israeli populace, no matter how illegitimate their claims to the lands in Hebron. It is a pathetic mess and it will take at least a century and, grimly, a great deal of blood to resolve itself.

The more recent breakdown of the cease fire with Hamas is proof of how Israel faces an existential threat, and dares not be distracted by the settlers

Or... at least... dressed up as "proof" that a modern state with nuclear weapons faces an existential threat from homemade rockets fired from a vast, rotting open-air prison. And with their stumblebum patron so distracted by war and meltdown - and hopes now gone of an attack on Iran by said stooge - Isreal can at least strike out and remove the thorn of Hamas from its tender hide. Israel is softening up global public opinion for its own holiday surprise - an invasion of Gaza. We can count on this getting very, very good press here in the states. It always has. In 60 years, we've grown accustomed to the tired routine: Always attack, never talk. Never show weakness.

...Or, evidently, humanity.

Thanks for an excellent piece. I have felt that the political scene inside Israel is as you describe it for some time, but it nice to see the details. It is a pessimistic story however.

If it is accepted that Israel is incapable of moving towards real two state solution on her own, just who is this outside force that can force her to do so. Not the US. Those same pro settlement forces that prevent progress in Israel, dominate the Jewish voice here in the US. The voices here at TPM or J Steet though encouraging are really minor. You may hope that Obama will do the right thing, but I do not think he would be willing to take on the lobby to do so. US politicians that have tried in the past have met nothing but trouble.

Look, Israel never really wanted a two-state solution. Nor did the Palestinians for that matter, but Israel has the big guns and forced the issue with these settlements. The fact that it is working against them, to some extent is bad vision on the part of Israel. They thought their military superiority would allow them to do whatever they wanted and now they have themselves in a pickle, because compromise looks like weakness for them. They blew it, in my opinion. They got too arrogant after '67 and they have no goodwill at all. The settlements and the settlers themselves were just an over-the-top move. No one with any clear head is going to say that that was Israel protecting itself (except U.S. media and politicians afraid to say anything). If so, perhaps we should start moving little suburbs into Iraq.

Bernard - I can vouch for everything you wrote about Kiryat Arba. I was there last month visiting my niece. Everywhere one went, to shul, to coffee houses, to settler's homes, the talk was always hair-on-fire vitriolic. It was an ugliness I never thought I would hear from one of our own. The arabs and anyone in Israel to the left of Feglin was subject the spittle spewing hatred.

I share your concern over the fate of the 2 state solution. The problem is not just in Kiryat Arba, I have relatives in other settlements where the vehement rejection of a "real" peace settlement is almost as bad. I have no solution in mind except to say that the dream of my Irgun grandfather for a true Jewish homeland may end up as dead as he is. May G-d grant the wisdom needed in these troubled times.

Apart from being brilliant, informative, and sincere, the post has this aspect:

1) Does a great job of stating the problem.

2) Doesn't offer much as to how the world could/would likely help.

The world involves USA, which has only a very limited stomach for confrontation on this. After Bush's 8 years of negligence and bad acts, we may be so deep in now that this is really insoluble.

Too much for Israel? How can that be? Everybody knows a State founded on Judaism is equipped with everything it needs to meet any exigency. To suggest otherwise is to chance resurrecting the specter of Mame's malevolent cousin, anti-Semitism!
I'm telling you, that whole state-founded-on-the-primacy-of-one-religious group thing is coming back to the Western world. Israel is just ahead of her time.

"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity and a striving after wind."

Between the lines, this article reveals a great deal about the thinking of Zionist intellectuals still trying to keep the dream alive, although most of humanity has long since come to recognize it as a nightmare. I have just read Mr. Avishai's entry in Wikipedia - he's a poster boy for the image that thoughtful Zionists would like to project. It is truly an impressive CV; his mother must be proud of having such a macher for a son. He is just the opposite of the ignorant, genocidal settlers that he is writing about. A Canadian/American Israeli of Ashkenazi extraction born to a professional Zionist father, he has both a practical and theoretical background in political economy, journalism, technology, business and education, and has been published by numerous highly respected magazines, so I think we can safely say that he knows whereof he speaks. To top it off, he has been on the receiving end of fundamentalist Zionist fury, no doubt earning the sobriquet of "self-hating Jew" along the way. That's why it's so instructive to see what he has to say.

It is important when discussing certain subjects that terms like Zionist and Zionism be defined, so that the reader knows at least what the writer means by it. I define Zionism as the ideology that gave rise to, and continues to provide a rationale for, the Jewish State. A Zionist, it follows, buys into that ideology. In this respect thinkers like Avishai are called, among other things, soft or Left Zionists. This term is applied to people who remain Zionists, but are critical of some Israeli actions and the more rigid, bellicose thinking of exponents of Jabotinskian political Zionism, like say, Netanyahu. He does not appear to be (at least from reading the article), what is referred to as a progressive Zionist, those who stress the suffering of the Palestinians - who are perceived by progressives as fellow human beings rather than something sub-human, caricatures of the "enemy." All of these folks are - bottom line - Zionists, because they assert that Israel, as a Jewish State, has a legal and/or an inherent "right to exist."

To sum up, Avishai's piece presents the view that the settler problem presents a new "existential threat" to the Jewish State. From a strategic point of view, his remark that "we will need the world's involvement" is a direct challenge to the conventional Israeli view that "the world" can go to hell. It is based on his awareness that America's blind support will not be sufficient to bring about the tired but still kicking notion of a "two state solution." The Europeans, up until now servile vassals within the New Roman Empire, just might balk at the continued tolerance for an out and out Nazi element threatening to upset the political balance of Israel, leaving America alone to prop up the Jewish State. There is also the very real possibility that the majority of American Jews - always dubious at best about Israel - will finally rebel against the Zionist powers that be, leaving Israel at the mercy of its newly energized neighbors.

Although support for the two state solution was never endorsed by the Israelis until just recently, and is still not popular with the American Zionist elite, people like Avishai realize that it is the last best hope for survival of some version of the Jewish State. In the last analysis, however, I suspect that even people like Avishai know in their hearts that the whole thing is, and always was, an exercize in futility. The Hebron phenomenon is just the most obvious example of what has always been true - the peoples of that place are inextricably interconnected (barring all out genocide which it is difficult to think that the world would tolerate). What is inevitable is that Jews and Palestinians will end up sharing the land and the polity, and the sooner this happens the less likely will be a resurgence of an antisemitism that would make even the Nazis of the Third Reich look like pikers, not to mention the very real likelihood of a worldwide nuclear confrontation sparked by diehard Zionists quite willing to obliterate most of humanity in defense of Eretz Yisroel.

For more info on the One State Solution go to http://tinyurl.com/8szw37 .

"Vengeance is mine saith the Lord, and I shall repay."

Clickable map please?