Before dropping out of the POTUS race, this candidate “eloquently” stated the Republican position on Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VECQLkK5vcg
'Finish the job once and for all with these butchers Hamas,' says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
First, I oppose those Americans who are complicit in Genocide; of both parties. Granting impunity for such a war crime even if only “morally,” when having no legal authority to do so, is itself a "War Crime” As with “moral support” for it through Incitement of Genocide, as held at both the IMT at Nuremberg and at Tokyo!
So I’ll beg forgiveness in advance if I offend anyone here who supported Likud’s “Main Squeeze” in 2016 and 2020, and again in 2024. Or who’ve turned to DeSantis more recently (until he dropped out), as “Trump was too transactional.” Implying I guess that he was insufficiently “ideological." But here is my 2 cents worth adding to the “Bogus Debate Over the Two-state Solution" addressed in the Haaretz article below. I hear people express support for a “two-state” solution,” yet support Republican POTUS candidates who are on record expressing total support for Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing/genocidal policies. A long-standing policy preference in line with his father, Benzion Netanyahu. So even if all Democrats favored the two-state solution, which they don’t, the U.S. would have approximately 50% of its elected Members of Congress opposed to it, in the form of the Republican Party. Who will obstruct every effort “left-wing Israelis” (increasingly minuscule) ever make for a two-state solution, if ever Israel can get out from under its Republican supported “Conservative” government/party, Likud and its Kahanist allies.
Which was never made so clear this POTUS campaign season (dating back to 2021) as with Trump and DeSantis, who just dropped out of the race while endorsing Trump. As DeSantis made clear in the New Republic article below, before dropping out. Which had been his policy as long as he was in elected office in the US (not Israel, though DeSantis seems confused as to who he represents). Then there is this Arab Center report on Trump and his administration, foreshadowing, along with Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, how much further the US Right will go in support of the Israeli Right, to fulfill any unfinished ideological/policy objectives they have:
BLUF: David Friedman, Trump’s personal bankruptcy lawyer, was the very first political appointee the president-elect chose to be US ambassador to Israel. A settlement financier and right-wing fanatic, Friedman would play a massive role in shaping US policy toward Israel/Palestine. The stage was promptly set for Israel to take full advantage of the Trump Administration’s first term; indeed, a laundry list of requests that the Israelis could only have dreamed of previously was handed to them by the Trump team.
. . .
"On the domestic front, Trump also advanced a number of steps that would surely please the Israelis as well as advocates for a “no daylight” approach to US-Israel relations. Key to this dynamic is how the United States would handle domestic dissent toward US-Israel policy, specifically in the form of Palestinian rights activism. During the Trump Administration, Republicans continued to push anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) legislation (Charles Koch’s front group, ALEC, in the forefront of that), weaponizing anti-Semitism as a political cudgel with which to beat Democrats and provide cover for a president and a party that often engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric of their own. In this vein, President Trump appointed Ken Marcus, a pro-Israel institutional leader and attorney who has zealously weaponized anti-Semitism to advocate against and silence Palestinian activism on campus, through the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education. Marcus used the opportunity to push his own ideological agenda and intimidate universities whose students and faculty engaged in Palestine activism.”
. . .
"Additionally, Trump appointed Elan Carr as the “Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism,” who similarly weaponized anti-Semitism for political purposes and sought to advance the institutionalization of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism throughout US government agencies. The innocuously named alliance’s definition incorrently defines criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic in certain circumstances; this has been deliberately weaponized by supporters of Israeli government policy to silence dissent."
And let’s not deny “credit” to Nikki Haley, as part of the Trump administration and the “tip of the spear” aimed at Palestinians at the UN:
"Any doubt about the direction the Trump Administration would take was removed by Nikki Haley, the president’s first ambassador to the United Nations, when she blocked a nomination for a UN role simply because of the Palestinian identity of the nominee."
"At one point, moderator Jake Tapper asked DeSantis if he supported the mass removal of Palestinians.
“I am not going to tell [Israel] to do that,” DeSantis said. “But if they make the calculation that to avert a second Holocaust, they need to do that,” then he wouldn’t stop them.
"The word for the mass expulsion of an ethnic group is ethnic cleansing.
"DeSantis also said he did not believe in a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Gaza, instead accusing “Palestinian Arabs” of refusing to recognize the existence of Israel. The Palestinian Authority does, in fact, recognize Israel.”
"Israel, however, only seems open to a two-state solution if the second state is on an entirely different continent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has reportedly been secretly speaking with the Democratic Republic of Congo about resettling thousands of Palestinians in the African nation.
"Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly floated the idea of forcibly removing Palestinians, but the idea has been vehemently rejected by the international community.
"Israeli officials, however, have made it increasingly clear in recent days that their plan is to completely eliminate Palestine. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said last week that a way to solve the war was to “encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees.”
As the Democrats and Biden have been so complicit in Israel’s genocide since 10/7, it is easy to overlook that as the US is divided equally between two parties, and in Congress, the opposing party is not without influence. As the Overton Window concept explains. With the most likely election of Trump again, with all the help Biden and the Democrats have given to him in that by continuing his militaristic policies, as Goldwater/Scoop Jackson Democrats; even if Biden demanded a “Two-state Solution,” the Israeli Right knows they just have to wait out this year. And with a little election interference on their behalf by Trump’s own “Deep State,” Peter Thiel’s Palantir and whatever took Cambridge Analytica’s place; Musk’s X perhaps with the massive data collection they have become, Israel’s Kahanist allies will once again be in the White House. And totally free again to act without even the “mildest criticism” of Biden” to “finish the job” of Genocide. As all the Republican candidates have called for, as one can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VECQLkK5vcg
0:40 / 1:36
'Finish the job once and for all with these butchers Hamas,' says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
If you're new to politics in the Middle East and happen to be following the heated exchange between the U.S. and Israel, you might be grossly misled to believe that an abstract entity called "a Palestinian state" is imminent and that the two countries are locked in a substantive debate over the feasibility, contours and features of such a place.
Not even close. The U.S. is miscalculating by constantly bringing up the subject and the Israeli prime minister is having a field day over the issue, for his own political reasons.
The renewed reemergence and rekindling of the concept of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement resulting in the formation of a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza is completely artificial and nothing more than grand posturing and a rhetorical hot potato untethered from political realities. A two-state solution may very well be the best possible and durable solution, certainly preferable to a one binational state or the untenable status quo, but we are far from it.
The U.S.' incessant reference to two states may reflect the best of intentions and a pronounced American policy preference, but at this point in time it is also counterproductive and ill-advised.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah in on January 10, 2024.Credit: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / POOL / AFP
When the Biden administration insists on the two-state solution it is exhibiting a profound misunderstanding of the Israeli zeitgeist and the current national psyche. It assumes rational political thinking where devastation, agony fears and emotions reign supreme. What the U.S. seems unable to understand is that there are two phase to the process, and the first is about revenge and anxiety. October 7 was not just a military, intelligence and conceptual debacle. It also instilled fear, uncertainty and humiliation in Israelis. When they hear "a Palestinian state," many now intuitively think about seven more October 7s at seven different points along the border between Israel and the hypothetical state. Who in their right mind would entertain such a solution?
Phase two is an inevitable, albeit incremental understanding in Israel that the status quo is unsustainable. The occupation breeds terror and insecurity and the notion that anyone could ignore the Palestinian issue is tragically flawed. This leads to an understanding that the current reality must change. But the realization of the two phases takes time. It is a gradual process that cannot be accelerated. In fact, a failure to recognize the stage of phase one delays the maturation of phase two.
All the U.S. needed to do was to qualify the term "Palestinian state" with words like "a future," "a gradual establishment," "by consent and as a result of good faith negotiations," and "demilitarized."
Israeli hostage families and supporters interrupt a Knesset Finance Committee meeting on Monday.Credit: Oren Ben Hakoon
This all served Benjamin Netanyhau perfectly. For him, the October 7 catastrophe needed to be reframed more broadly so as to allow him to escape responsibility and shrug off accountability: he began to express a parallel universe narrative in which the ongoing war is not just about Hamas, but actually a civilizational war against Iran in which the Palestinians are proxies. That led to him to push "a Palestinian state" as the bogus central narrative.
The U.S. is pressuring him to agree to the establishment of a terror-infested Palestinian state, but he resisted and will continue to deflect the pressure. Except that there was never any pressure, just the U.S. outlining what it believes would be the best solution.
The current invocation of a Palestinian state was not meant to express support for its immediate establishment. Far from it. The U.S. knows all too well the immediate and circumstantial unviability of such a proposition. It was made in the context of two factors: the U.S.' view of postwar Gaza where a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority is part of the governing structure, and the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari willingness to normalize relations with Israel provided that there is a serious Israeli-Palestinian process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu, as part of his "only I can prevent this" habit, made it an issue. The U.S., unwisely, fell into the trap.
Netanyahu speaks at a press conference, last week.Credit: Yariv Katz
Since the 1990s, American foreign policy adopted the two-state solution as the desirable settlement for the 100-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians since 1967. Successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have invoked the model as the best option available, one that should be agreed on as a result of negotiations. That makes sense, but so does timing.
Whether a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the best solution, whether such as state is viable politically and economically, whether such a state satisfies Palestinian desire for self-determination and Israeli security and whether it will be a failed state from the outset warrants four separate articles. In fact, thousands of articles, studies and books have already been written on the topic. What is unequivocally clear now is that any American insistence on the issue and any Israeli rejection are immaterial and untimely.
