Much has justly been written about the Obama administration’s mishandling of Israeli-Palestinian talks. But it’s important to remember that the real barrier to an agreement isn’t flawed American diplomacy but rather the Palestinians’ refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist. Nothing better illustrates this fact than a stunning new poll by The Israel Project.
Like every other poll in recent years, TIP found that a strong majority of Palestinians (60 percent) accept a two-state solution. This unvarying finding is often cited as proof that Palestinians do, in fact, accept Israel’s existence.
But unlike any other poll I’ve ever seen, TIP thought to ask the all-important follow-up question: is the goal a permanent two-state solution, or is the goal “to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state?”
Only 30 percent chose the first option, while fully 60 percent deemed two states a mere stepping-stone to Israel’s ultimate eradication. In other words, the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of 1974 is alive and kicking.
That plan called for Palestinians to gain control of any territory they could and then use it as a base for further assaults on Israel until the ultimate goal of the Jewish state’s destruction is achieved. Theoretically, the plan was superseded by the 1993 Oslo Accords, in which the PLO ostensibly recognized Israel and accepted the two-state solution. But it turns out that most Palestinians still view two states as a mere way station on the road to Israel’s ultimate destruction — just as the Phased Plan advocated.
This finding also explains another consistent polling anomaly: though all polls show that most Palestinians accept a two-state solution, they also show that most Palestinians oppose any deal that could realistically be signed.
TIP’s poll, for instance, found that only 24 percent support the Clinton parameters, which most Westerners still deem the basis for any agreement. A recent poll by the Arab World for Research and Development similarly found that while most Palestinians say a two-state solution is acceptable in principle, a whopping 85 percent oppose it if it requires “compromises on key issues (right of return, Jerusalem, borders, settlements, etc.).”
Since any realistic agreement will require compromises on these issues, that means most Palestinians oppose a two-state solution in practice. And at first glance, this seems schizophrenic: why support something in principle if you oppose it in practice?
But in light of TIP’s finding about the Palestinians’ ultimate goal, it makes perfect sense. If the two-state solution is intended solely as a stepping-stone to Israel’s eradication, then the compromises entailed by any realistic agreement are indeed unacceptable, because they undermine the deal’s ability to serve this purpose. A deal that gave Israel defensible borders, for instance, would reduce its vulnerability to attack, and one that nixed the “right of return” would make it harder to convert Israel into a second Palestinian-majority state.
Until most Palestinians give up the goal of Israel’s ultimate destruction, even the smartest diplomacy in the world won’t produce a deal. All it will do is waste a lot of time, money, and diplomatic capital that would be better spent elsewhere.
“In the age of Youtube debates, CNN holograms, and instant change, substance can be more trouble than it’s worth.”
That’s a funny line and made me smile, thanks.
I think this is the age celebrity and so substance, well, you know how far that’ll get you.
Your analysis seems off. For one, Obama didn’t support gay marriage, although he did try and thread the needle by opposing prop 8. Second, all the exit polling shows that massive african american turnout propelled prop 8 to victory and were the one ethnic group that overwhelmingly supported it. Say what you will about the African American electorate and its homophobia, but that hardly lessens Obama’s mandate nor does it muddy the significance of his election. The “Left” isn’t a monolith, so pointing out contradictions like these doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a leftward shift. I don’t understand how American can elect a “socialist” “wealth redistributor,” as you call him, and still be a center-right country. I don’t understand how Indiana, which hasn’t gone democratic since LBJ can go blue and still be a center-right country. There is simply no evidence for the claim other than Brokaw’s ludicrous assertion that more square miles are red than blue.
David S Mazel beat me to it. I love that last line.
This morning, I received an email from my friend who was in Chicago last night. As you can imagine, my friend talked about being a part of history, being inspired, looking up to an intelligent man.
its great branding folks! all of those lame articles on America finally shifting to the left, and the Left Coast itself votes for Prop 8?
How nice that the closet case is proud of Prop Hate.
Bull. The GOP needs to reinvent- it needs to reinvent itself as a conservative party of small government, low taxes, freedom, and choice. It needs some sort of contract with America, about founding principles and stuff. It didn’t run into a ‘charismatic candidate’ or a ‘great politician’- that doesn’t explain the thrashing of every GOP candidate up and down the ballot, the election of liberal judges and school board members, or the large amount of liberal ballot proposals that passed. Don’t let this one conservative victory fool you- that was the exception, not the rule.
Yes, I think Prop 8 is a confirmation that the change embodied in Obama’s personhood was all this country really wanted. We didn’t really want to embrace moral changes based on his recommendation… so a lot of people will keep living and believing the same way they always did while the liberal illuminati do their thing. Although California seems to be bipolar on certain big issues. I really hope they don’t try to pull some retroactive law crap on the 18,000 people who married during the legal window.
Obama is not a force of nature, or extraordinary. He is a featherweight politician, with radical roots and little going for him other than that he is an educated, articulate black who does not fit the Al Sharpton image.
The moment accommodates him. We have just suffered a frightening financial crack-up under detested Republicans. They have been demonized for eight years while fighting a necessary but unpopular war. And all the time there has been the problematic George Bush, unable to speak a sentence without the crutch of a giggle.
In contrast Obama seems intelligent and adult. Moreover, his color offers Americans a chance to satisfy their deep longing, to put an end to the racism issue.
fully agree with #5- McCain is an honorable man, but he lacked vision and ability to communicate a brighter future. As an Independent, I believe conservatives should lean more libertarian. Liberals have their hand in your pocket, and conservatives have eyes in your bedroom. So, the winning philosophy is less government and more freedom. Promote civil-unions, allow women to choose into a certain time limit, and let any person of any sexual orientation serve the US at any level. More freedom, more choice, less government, = winning ticket. esp with a strong military and pride in American leadership.
The GOP kept the team name “conservative” but became more and more statist and interventionist, even socialist, as long as it’s socialism to protect the rentier class.
They screwed up everything they touched. When it came to streets, they favored K and Wall, and let Main go hang.
Of course, Obama is an eloquent, clever politician, and has been very lucky (Hillary ‘s team ignored the caucuses, the financial collapse came just when he needed it). Without the utter fecklessness of the GOP, however, BHO would have remained a footnote to history.
Obama told Brian Williams that he wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will respect the right of privacy in the Constitution, “like the right to marry whomever you wish.” Thus, whereas he may or may not be “for” gay marriage, he intends to appoint justices who will make it possible. His opposition to Prop 8 signaled his hope that the California Supreme Court would sanction gay marriage without a vote being cast, just as he hopes to do on a nationwide basis with his Supreme Court picks.
Whether he succeeds is another story, as it is hard to imagine how one could have a privacy right to a publicly sanctioned status. What he probably means is that the right to “liberty” used by Justice Harlan and others to support a right to “privacy” also applies to the “liberty” to marry someone of the same sex. Why this logic would not extend to marrying one’s son or brother – none of the public health concerns about incest apply to same-sex couplings – is not clear, but I’m sure it will be explained when the time comes.
It will be a while before we understand what the totality of the vote pointed to. Since Obama, in spite of his unrelievedly radical left associations, did not campaign as a leftist, it would be as wrong to judge that the country wants a strong leftist agenda as to say that it voted to turn to the right.
One thing about the California results is that the turnout was greatest in the traditionally “bluest” counties, particularly LA County and the I-80 corridor from San Francisco to Sacramento. Turnout in LA County was over 80%, an extraordinary level that looks likely to set a record.
Turnout in my traditionally red county, however, was 41%, down from over 50% in 2004. Even in San Diego — also traditionally red, but a fast-growing major metro area — turnout was down substantially from 2004. McCain and Obama together polled only about 860K votes in San Diego County yesterday, compared to the more than 1.1 million combined total of Bush and Kerry in 2004.
Regarding Prop 8, we need to remember that a traditional marriage ballot proposition, with the same language, passed with a supermajority of 61% in 2000. The vote on that measure, Prop 22, occurred during a March primary election, and yielded 4,618,673 votes for the proposition. Yesterday’s vote, in which the red counties had lower turnout than the blue ones, gave Prop 8 5,235,486 votes, as of the latest update.
Although I am hearing the report that it was black voters that put Prop 8 over the top yesterday, I’m not so sure that is particularly informative analysis. The historical fundamentals of the overall population’s sentiment did not change, if we look at the 2000 election, and the counties and their demographic make-up. LA County went for Prop 8 very, very narrowly: 50.4 to 49.6. The vote in my exurban red county — overwhelmingly white and Latino — was typical of the red counties: 64% to 36%. But the vote was lower in the red counties yesterday than it was in either 2004 or the general election of 2000. If turnout had been higher in the red counties, what we could have expected was for Prop 8 to pass with an even higher total, and percentage of the vote. If we derive anything from yesterday’s numbers, it might be that blacks and Latinos who turned out in record numbers in LA made up for the Prop 8 vote that did NOT turn out in the red counties.
The substantially lower vote turnout in the red counties — which have been voting solidly “red” since at least 1992 — was probably the biggest difference for McCain. Comparing the numbers of Kerry and Obama in the three largest red counties — Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino — Obama’s edge over Kerry was very small. It was the loss of votes for McCain versus Bush that made the difference in these counties. Big differences in the numbers there. McCain just didn’t get the Republican vote galvanized. I don’t think, myself, that that’s a function of inadequate campaigning or management, but rather of McCain’s philosophical shortcomings as a REPUBLICAN candidate.
I’d agree with JE Dyer. It’s too early to work out the meaning of Obama’s election and the passing of Prop 8.
I noticed that the pro-Prop 8 campaign was very strong. I live in San Francisco and received more calls in its favor than any other political call. I received no anti-Prop 8 calls except an Obama call which wedged in Prop 8 at the end.
I knew someone who kept putting Prop 8 signs on his lawn each time one was stolen until election day. Twenty-three signs were stolen.
I’d guess that if people worked as hard for McCain as they did for Prop 8, McCain would have won.
No. quatre: takes one to know one, donnit?
#4, That reference to Foucault is SO clever! Us conservative dumbasses will never get that, huh? Go back to DailyKos and let the grownups talk, mmmkay?
Fred — remember, shipmate: French verbs arranged “a Foucault” are incredibly banal and silly allusions, and aren’t worth responding to.
“Stripped them of the right to marriage”…? What right to marriage? Marriage is not a right.
Simple, clear, direct language titled by the petitioners, to be added as a new section, section 7.5 to Article 1 of the California Constitution.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, a Democrat, decided that he didn’t like the language and added in his own. Same sex partnerships, bigamy, polygamy and everything else was left undefined. The people who think that everything is about them added in their own language.
Babe,
Obama won because people think he’s Black and he promised them endless welfare checks. Prop 8 in CA lost because it was decided by all the voters, rather than the gerrymadered voter districts there. If you look at a voter district map in CA, you’ll see that the entire coast from North to South is one narrow district. That’s because the coast has the cities with the largest populations and are infested with leftists. Most of them are migrants from other states. The rest of the state has a higher population overall, but it’s divided into gerrymandered districts that dilute their voting power. The rest of the state is more conservative then the left-wing transpalnts on the coast.
Similar marriage protection amendments passed all around the country.
Do some F^cking research.
Barack Hussein Obama is about as extraordinary a politician as Nancy pelosi and Harry Reid. The only difference is that nobody thinks those two are Black.
“Republicans had nothing better to offer up than a great man, a self-sacrificing war hero determined to run an honorable campaign. “
Amen to that! I’m sick to death of hearing him trashed by the same conservatives who sang his praises a few days ago. As Rosencrantz says: “Consistency is all I ask!”
Yes! You’re right! The Republican party doesn’t need to reinvent itself! It must stay the course! Surely in 2012 or 2016, America will come to its senses and realize that Republicans, still embracing positions that made so much sense in 2000 (or 1986), have been waiting in the wings all along with the agenda we really need.
Wright is no racist – he may be a kook – but he’s a kook who’s responded to the very real racism of his time (Jim Crow, discrimination, etc) with heated rhetoric…
I wonder if greenwald would call a Jew – one who refuses to buy gemran products such as a BMW as racist – because I know many jews – particularly older one – who won’t have ANYTHING to do with Germans – i guess they’re hate-filled RACISTS…
I voted for McCain and against 8.
I must be bad luck haha.
This argument seems absurd to me. Prop 8 won, proving that Californians are actually conservative, therefore their preference for Obama must be delusional? Are you claiming that if Obama hadn’t been “charismatic,” then California would have voted REPUBLICAN? Does this mean that Gore and Kerry’s “charisma” won them California in the last two elections as well? I don’t get it.
Prop 8 won because it was a statewide referendum and most Californians are more moderate than those who live on the coast. Obama won because Americans are brainwashed by the elitist news media, more than 60% of them (if you count employees of big government contracters like Boing, et al,) depend on the government for their paychecks, and there is no shortage of dolts and parasites looking for the handouts the 0 promised them on his TV channel 24/7.
Obama is popular right now, but so called gay marriage isn’t.
A.B. said, “Yes, I think Prop 8 is a confirmation that the change embodied in Obama’s personhood was all this country really wanted. We didn’t really want to embrace moral changes based on his recommendation… so a lot of people will keep living and believing the same way they always did while the liberal illuminati do their thing.”
Exactly. Now all the self-ascribed “liberals” who voted for Obama (“See how liberal I am for voting for a black man?!”) can feel better about themselves for their one “charity” case, while so many of them just stripped the rights of GLBT citizens with the tiny mark of a pen or touch of a screen. They can now tell themselves and everyone else just how open-minded they are, because they voted for Obama!
What about those Progressives who are not in favor of same-sex marriage?
Please read “NO ON (CALIFORNIA) PROP 8 IS ANTI-FEMINIST AND REGRESSIVE” posted at WindsofChange.net, November 4, 2008.
I would post the link but security rules may prohibit such.
First, to bgo813, the author does state that Obama opposes gay marriage. About the article, it presupposes that CA is a representative sample of the country as a whole. Fair enough, but needed to be said. Note that Florida has very stringent anti-Gay legislation on the books and it too voted heavily for Obama and for a ban on same sex marriage. So, who were the voting coalitions? The first one is the moderate democrat. These folks pick and choose the meaning of less government to suit their political agendas and economic philosophies. But they tend also to be more open on social issues and gay issues specifically. So perhaps their vote on the gay marriage ban was split. Then there’s the turned off republican coalition. These folks were simply digusted by their party, bought the informercial that all problems are due to Bush, or perhaps truly moved to a variation of a fiscal platform. In any case, they still more likely remain socially conservative, with a sincere digust of gays in general or, more leniently, a host of alternatives to the idea of gay marriage (e.g. civil union). It’s the latter group, however that won the vote for Obama because the former was most likely going to vote for him anyway. It’s the latter group that won the ban on gay marriage.
However, there’s the issue of the language itself. Yes to many means “in favor of” and the rest is immaterial, while No just means opposes. So if you weren’t thinking about a Ban per se and just gay marriage itself, it might have been that some voters thought they were voting in favor of gay marriage instead of in favor of a ban on gay marriage. The reverse for the no vote. In this case ,if you account for human error in interpreting the measure, you get some explanation as well behind the results.
PROP 8 AND THE FUNDAMENTALIST HATE-MONGERS
The Mormon Church and the black evangelicals are the ones most responsible for putting this anti-civil rights measure over the top in California. It is my personal belief that if these people don’t believe in homosexual marriages, then don’t do it yourself. You’re free not to get married to a person of the same sex.
But do not try to put your personal moral beliefs on to others. Contrary to popular belief, America was not founded as a “Christian” nation and certainly not a “Mormon” nation. And blacks were then slaves and considered 3/5ths of a person for their state’s voting rights.
Believe it or not, there is and was from the beginning an expressly defined separation of church and state in the Constitution.
Ignorant fundamentalists, whether they be Mormon or black evangelicals, should not be able to tell gays that they can’t have equal, civil rights.
It’s not only wrong, it’s profoundly un-American.
Unfortunately, the Mormons and the black evangelicals have not yet learned the fundamentals of the Constitution or of basic civil rights. One would think that both groups would have learned from the prejudice directed at them and their ancestors. But, instead, stupidity and intolerance spring eternal from people who should know better.
Sad. But true.
If I weren’t an atheist myself (although of Christian and pre- Revolutionary War background), I would consign these Mormons and black evangelicals to hell for eternity. Fortunately for them, I don’t have an inside access to God. They should thank their God that I don’t, because I still have only utter contempt for their stupidity and ignorance.
There is no such thing as a “right” to marriage. It is a priviledge bestowed by the people through their laws to those who meet the basic criteria.
It seems that blacks overwhelmingly and Hispanics to a lesser degree opposed gay marriage. How ironic that the turn out in favor of Obama led to the defeat of this silly proposal.
Ah, a post “yes” on prop 8 world. How nice it is to see the people who lost take it in stride and go home. Oh wait, we’re seeing protests and street closures, signs, and hatred towards religious communities for speaking out and asking for support on a proposition with religous undertones. Shame on the gay community for such behavior. Stolen “Yes on 8″ signs, cars vandalized that have “Yes on 8″ stickers. We’re in support of the keeping marriage as a sacrament, something untouchable by the gay community.
If you don’t like Prop 8, move. California has now twice voiced it’s approval for keeping marriage sacred. Respect the voice of the majority for once instead of sticking your middle fingers up and thinking your voice is louder than the rest of us.
One has to sympathize with gay people who feel that their life of hurt will be soothed by being “married.” Unfortunately, the push for marriage in 3 states leaves gays in the 47 other states behind the eight (so to speak) ball. Never say never, but it will take a long time to pass gay marriage in those other states, much longer than passing civil union or domestic partnership. This is because people are not stupid. They can recognize the difference between a civil and legal right and the use of the word “marriage.” There will be far more resistance to the latter. In addition, speaking to the author’s point, the country wants liberal change, it wants the social safety net to have its “tears” sewn back together and even improved. But it may not want to condone same sex marriage. Besides, how is marrying people of the same sex a 14th Amendment Issue? Marriage between the sexes has been a longtime license by the state, not same sex marriage. Same sex marriage isn’t ok for white, but not for blacks, or ok for northerns or not for southerners. It’s just not ok period and, as pointed out by another writer here, it isn’t logically different than having adults marry children, or seven wives or all kinds of other issues based upon moral strictures. Worse of all, this entire ruckus stands to endanger moving other liberal issues forward, things that are imperative and affect 100% of the population–the economy, universal health care, ending the war, paring back the military-industrial establishment, the thorny immigration issue, and so many other important matters. Remember “don’t ask don’t tell”? It completely undermined the beginning of the Clinton administration. And was it worth it? Gay marriage is both not good for so many gays in the other states and it is not good for so many liberal causes. It is for these reasons that the country elected Obama but California passed Prop 8. Not only are these issues not the same, but Prop 8 stands to truly endanger the successful handling of the other issues. I think it was for this reason that Obama supported civil unions and not gay marriage and it is for this reason that thinking, and reasonable, liberals supported that supposed dichotomy with their votes.