We talk about Israel at peace with all of its Arab neighbors and as part of that the creation of a new state - the state of Palestine. Together 23 states.
What J Street is not talking about is the ingrained antisemitic culture of the Arab world. It failed to note history when Gaza had at least three opportunities for statehood. It has not mentioned the joy and religious fervor of the terrorists screaming “Allah Ahkbar” as the raped women, killed babies, beheaded the dead and cut the genitalia off men at the NOVA festival. I failed to comment that no other Arab country accepted Palestinian refugees leaving the problem to Israel. Netanyahu & Trump deserve no accolades. This likely could have been achieved much sooner if not for their extreme right wing governments and both of them needing something to keep them in office & out of jail.
Most of the actions you describe have been discredited. They never happened. Hamas did shoot many innocent people to death, 800+ peaceful civilians along with 300+ soldiers, and that is not good! It was probably in retaliation for the murder of 240+ Palestinians by settlers in the previous year, most at the instigation of Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Both sides are guilty of killing civilians, and both sides are guilty of retaliating by killing far more people than they lost themselves.
Now I just read in The Times of Israel that Smotrich refuses to apologize to the hostages and their families because his bragging about increased mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners led to the mistreatment of the hostages. We have to get him OUT of the government of Israel! Really, these two right-wing extremists he has had to appease are more responsible for this terrible trouble than Netanyahu is.
I have been reading various opinions by yourself and Jeremy over the years. What I found most interesting is the fact that within all the pages, little is written about the Palestinian sector. The fact is that at no time has anyone at JStreet posed the question or pressed for an unequivical answer to the underlying issue. That issue is the contuing denial by the Palestinian Sector, comprising government, education and social services (among others) of the Jewish Peoples actual and factual historical ties to the Land. The Palestinian Sector, though, through its texbooks, educational programs and media grooms its children to molest and murder Jews.
Until such time as the Palestinian spokespeople you so happilly platform, turn the corner to adding Jews as founding Peoples in the Land, nothing you claim to support will come to fruition.
I think it will lay down its arms and disband when it can do it without exposing the people of Gaza to attacks without any defense. This can happen when a strong international peacekeeping force is in place in Gaza. The sooner the better!
I'm far more skeptical. Hamas is executing its own people for suspected collaboration. That's not a sign they are ready to lay down their arms and disband. The purpose of the international force is to keep Gaza from remilitarizing itself.
You can gress it up however you want, but there will never be a solution without a internationally recognized independent Palestinian State. This goes back to the Camp David Accords. The details, names & dates might change but the core issue remains. It is Israel's refusal to accept that fact that is the obstacle.
Cutoff the head of the snake: eliminate Hamas with extreme prejudice. Then peace will come but Israel cannot allow a contiguous Palestinian state to exist and ever be safe from their oft stated goal of driving the Jews into the sea.
People don’t trust the Hamas controlled Gaza. Until they are eliminated there will be more Israeli military responses. You should be calling out the aggressor which is and was Hamas. No more victimized Jews my friend. We’ve experienced your tilted logic toward our safety and don’t trust this let s be friends trash.
One of the best things Netanyahu could do for his own country is to release Marwan Barghouti. I have read that he has been imprisoned for murders he did not commit, to avoid negotiations for a two-state solution - the same reason Netanyahu encouraged Hamas. That is, if Netanyahu cares more about his country's security than he does about avoiding a two-state solution. I read that Barghouti favors a two states, a peaceful Palestine alongside a peaceful;l Israel. Isn't that the ideal? Unlike Abbas, he would get more votes in an election than any former Hamas members who ran for office - and a Palestinian state must eventually have elections! Hamas wants to eradicate Israel, which is not a realistic objective: Israel is not going to go away. The PA would accept a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West bank, but Abbas isn't very popular.
A Palestinian state with Barghouti as Prime Minister and a new Israel with a peaceable Prime Minister like Golan might be able to get along very well as equals. They might be able to cooperate and even become friends! And the Middle East would have a lasting peace.
A phantasy that typically ignores Palestinian agency and asserts that Israel can unilaterally make peace. The conflict cannot be managed. Palestinians are still wedded to a Salafist solution. The only path is to move the Abrahamic Accords forward, ignore Palestinians and UNRWA and hope that deradicalization works. If it fails I suppose you think Jews should follow the critics and just leave. Only where should the only other population of Jews go? The war against the Jews is raging everywhere.
It has amazed me how phantasies of a two-state solution exist in the West but do not on either side of the conflict. The causes for this phantasy are different than the anti-Judaism in young, affluent elites or Islamists. Look at the polling the PCPSR have done. Gazans may not like Hamas but they support the war against the Jews. The almost unanimous desire is for a single state solution with Muslims ruling. That is a non-starter. For Muslims it’s a 150 year old religious conflict based on Salifist ideology. Of course, the is a mixture of FLN tactics appended to this Islamic fundamentalism.
Palestinians need to change and there is no evidence that compromise over land ends the conflict. From the river to the sea Palestine will be an Arab is what is chanted in Arabic. Gerges’ exegesis on Islamic fundamentalism makes it clear that Islam’s return to greatness requires a genocide of Jews. There are competing ideologies of Islam - the Rom Party in Israel offers one alternative- but it’s Salafi or other competing fundamentalist visions of Islam govern the street. Islam is profoundly antisemitic - the social science overflows with these studies and Mehdi Hassan’s article on British Muslim’s dirty little secret offers a glimpse from a secular, left wing Muslim.
Anti-Jewish phantasies and phantasies that the conflict can magically cease only make its resolution more difficult. What offers my a glimmer of hope that change may come is that the Abrahamic Accords are still on the table. Rumors that Syria and Lebanon may sign on to those accords is a positive, if true.
Your thesis makes that possibility more distant and unlikely. Solutions need to be grounded in reality. That reality is Palestinians do not want a 2-state solution. Israelis do not want a 2-state solution. Land for peace was possible with Egypt. It has never been a motivation for Palestinians.
Israel isn't going away. It is unrealistic to expect it. But there are politicians in Gaza who don't want it to go away but want their own state alongside it. Unfortunately, the most popular and capable of them, Marwan Barghouti, whom even a neutral publication like the Christian Science Monitor calls "the Palestinian Mandela," is still in prison on false charges, and the most recent person to visit him said he had four ribs broken recently. Trump needs to lean on Bibi to release him. It will help with their mutual objective of getting Hamas to disband.
Some of these recent posts have noted this, but what supports the belief in a “credible Palestinian partner?” There is only one narrative now, sustained by groups like J Street, media giants like the NY Times, and many others:
The suffering, blameless Palestinians and the brutal heartless Israelis. There is no point in reiterating or tabulating the multiple points of pain and resentment on both sides, but I would ask where in this debate is an acknowledgement of the long standing history of Palestinian failure? In 1948, after partition, there was a war, and the Israelis prevailed over Palestinian fighters and the armies of several arab states. What do you think would have happened to the Israelis if they had lost? Would there have been enough dead jews to draw world sympathy? But, what have the Palestinians created since that time? Supported by the UN and arab countries happy not to take any responsibility for their lives, Palestinians have been encouraged to sit in refugee camps with their ”keys” anticipating a return to land and houses that they lost. This was always a fantasy, and the years of airplane highjackings, suicide bombings, guerilla war, missiles and tunnels systems have produced what? And of course successive Israeli governments have brutally taken advantage of their incompetence, hatred, and rage. Perhaps there is now an opportunity to establish a Palestinian state, but given the complete absence of "credible Palestinan partners,” (20 years of Mahmoud Abbas!), and an ideology built on resentment and victimization honed over many years, people are entitled to hope, but why believe anything will fundamentally change? The narrative is now baked in. The Palestinians have their “nakba” and the Israelis have theirs (called the Holocaust) but the jews have spread and prospered over the earth building and creating, and the Palestinians have produced what? For good and for ill, much is expected of jews. Perhaps because Palestinians are defined so much by their pain, nothing is expected of them.
The Palestinians created a great deal. Left as refugees in tents, they built high-rise apartments to house so many people in so little space, built schools, universities, hospitals, and some of the best medical schools in the world. My own doctor comes from there, and he's the best we have ever had in our region. And this has been in spite of being repressed, not even allowed to export the oranges they raised, forced to cut the crowns off the tomatoes they raised so they would spoil and no one would buy them.
This is well written and carefully crafted from a pro-Israel perspective. But it ignores the fact that Israel is hated more than ever globally; and anti-Semitism has reached levels that have not been seen since World War II, with much worse yet to come. No Jew is safe anywhere, which is tragic.
Even worse is the likelihood that "Osama bin Laden 2.0" is plotting a nation-ending EMP Attack or similar assault against Israel, to achieve immortality. And yes, at least nine nations have nuclear weapons (e.g., Pakistan, India, Russia); and it's a buyer's market. Money talks.
October 7th underscored the fact that Israeli intelligence was nonexistent; its Mossad was sound asleep; and its Iron Dome was porous at best. To many, Israel has been a cancer on the world since 1948. When the photos and other indicia of Israel's war crimes and yes, Genocide become available, the global reaction may be uncontrollable.
We talk about Israel at peace with all of its Arab neighbors and as part of that the creation of a new state - the state of Palestine. Together 23 states.
What J Street is not talking about is the ingrained antisemitic culture of the Arab world. It failed to note history when Gaza had at least three opportunities for statehood. It has not mentioned the joy and religious fervor of the terrorists screaming “Allah Ahkbar” as the raped women, killed babies, beheaded the dead and cut the genitalia off men at the NOVA festival. I failed to comment that no other Arab country accepted Palestinian refugees leaving the problem to Israel. Netanyahu & Trump deserve no accolades. This likely could have been achieved much sooner if not for their extreme right wing governments and both of them needing something to keep them in office & out of jail.
Most of the actions you describe have been discredited. They never happened. Hamas did shoot many innocent people to death, 800+ peaceful civilians along with 300+ soldiers, and that is not good! It was probably in retaliation for the murder of 240+ Palestinians by settlers in the previous year, most at the instigation of Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Both sides are guilty of killing civilians, and both sides are guilty of retaliating by killing far more people than they lost themselves.
Now I just read in The Times of Israel that Smotrich refuses to apologize to the hostages and their families because his bragging about increased mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners led to the mistreatment of the hostages. We have to get him OUT of the government of Israel! Really, these two right-wing extremists he has had to appease are more responsible for this terrible trouble than Netanyahu is.
What about the thousands of Palestinian prisoners detained arbitrarily without charges who remain imprisoned? What about ending the occupation?
From the river to the sea, only Palestine.
I have been reading various opinions by yourself and Jeremy over the years. What I found most interesting is the fact that within all the pages, little is written about the Palestinian sector. The fact is that at no time has anyone at JStreet posed the question or pressed for an unequivical answer to the underlying issue. That issue is the contuing denial by the Palestinian Sector, comprising government, education and social services (among others) of the Jewish Peoples actual and factual historical ties to the Land. The Palestinian Sector, though, through its texbooks, educational programs and media grooms its children to molest and murder Jews.
Until such time as the Palestinian spokespeople you so happilly platform, turn the corner to adding Jews as founding Peoples in the Land, nothing you claim to support will come to fruition.
I appreciate the optimistic vision. The one question that remains for me is, is Hamas really willing to lay down its arms?
I think it will lay down its arms and disband when it can do it without exposing the people of Gaza to attacks without any defense. This can happen when a strong international peacekeeping force is in place in Gaza. The sooner the better!
I'm far more skeptical. Hamas is executing its own people for suspected collaboration. That's not a sign they are ready to lay down their arms and disband. The purpose of the international force is to keep Gaza from remilitarizing itself.
You can gress it up however you want, but there will never be a solution without a internationally recognized independent Palestinian State. This goes back to the Camp David Accords. The details, names & dates might change but the core issue remains. It is Israel's refusal to accept that fact that is the obstacle.
Outrageous
Decades ago, Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors' Nazi oppressors. He is responsible for nonstop Genocide against the Palestinians!
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/trump-israel-netanyahu/2025/11/12/id/1234188/ ("Trump Asked Israeli President to Pardon Netanyahu")
Lots of us voted for Trump three times, but we oppose his decisions with respect to the Apartheid state.
Good read 👏🏽
Cutoff the head of the snake: eliminate Hamas with extreme prejudice. Then peace will come but Israel cannot allow a contiguous Palestinian state to exist and ever be safe from their oft stated goal of driving the Jews into the sea.
People don’t trust the Hamas controlled Gaza. Until they are eliminated there will be more Israeli military responses. You should be calling out the aggressor which is and was Hamas. No more victimized Jews my friend. We’ve experienced your tilted logic toward our safety and don’t trust this let s be friends trash.
One of the best things Netanyahu could do for his own country is to release Marwan Barghouti. I have read that he has been imprisoned for murders he did not commit, to avoid negotiations for a two-state solution - the same reason Netanyahu encouraged Hamas. That is, if Netanyahu cares more about his country's security than he does about avoiding a two-state solution. I read that Barghouti favors a two states, a peaceful Palestine alongside a peaceful;l Israel. Isn't that the ideal? Unlike Abbas, he would get more votes in an election than any former Hamas members who ran for office - and a Palestinian state must eventually have elections! Hamas wants to eradicate Israel, which is not a realistic objective: Israel is not going to go away. The PA would accept a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West bank, but Abbas isn't very popular.
A Palestinian state with Barghouti as Prime Minister and a new Israel with a peaceable Prime Minister like Golan might be able to get along very well as equals. They might be able to cooperate and even become friends! And the Middle East would have a lasting peace.
A phantasy that typically ignores Palestinian agency and asserts that Israel can unilaterally make peace. The conflict cannot be managed. Palestinians are still wedded to a Salafist solution. The only path is to move the Abrahamic Accords forward, ignore Palestinians and UNRWA and hope that deradicalization works. If it fails I suppose you think Jews should follow the critics and just leave. Only where should the only other population of Jews go? The war against the Jews is raging everywhere.
It has amazed me how phantasies of a two-state solution exist in the West but do not on either side of the conflict. The causes for this phantasy are different than the anti-Judaism in young, affluent elites or Islamists. Look at the polling the PCPSR have done. Gazans may not like Hamas but they support the war against the Jews. The almost unanimous desire is for a single state solution with Muslims ruling. That is a non-starter. For Muslims it’s a 150 year old religious conflict based on Salifist ideology. Of course, the is a mixture of FLN tactics appended to this Islamic fundamentalism.
Palestinians need to change and there is no evidence that compromise over land ends the conflict. From the river to the sea Palestine will be an Arab is what is chanted in Arabic. Gerges’ exegesis on Islamic fundamentalism makes it clear that Islam’s return to greatness requires a genocide of Jews. There are competing ideologies of Islam - the Rom Party in Israel offers one alternative- but it’s Salafi or other competing fundamentalist visions of Islam govern the street. Islam is profoundly antisemitic - the social science overflows with these studies and Mehdi Hassan’s article on British Muslim’s dirty little secret offers a glimpse from a secular, left wing Muslim.
Anti-Jewish phantasies and phantasies that the conflict can magically cease only make its resolution more difficult. What offers my a glimmer of hope that change may come is that the Abrahamic Accords are still on the table. Rumors that Syria and Lebanon may sign on to those accords is a positive, if true.
Your thesis makes that possibility more distant and unlikely. Solutions need to be grounded in reality. That reality is Palestinians do not want a 2-state solution. Israelis do not want a 2-state solution. Land for peace was possible with Egypt. It has never been a motivation for Palestinians.
Israel isn't going away. It is unrealistic to expect it. But there are politicians in Gaza who don't want it to go away but want their own state alongside it. Unfortunately, the most popular and capable of them, Marwan Barghouti, whom even a neutral publication like the Christian Science Monitor calls "the Palestinian Mandela," is still in prison on false charges, and the most recent person to visit him said he had four ribs broken recently. Trump needs to lean on Bibi to release him. It will help with their mutual objective of getting Hamas to disband.
Some of these recent posts have noted this, but what supports the belief in a “credible Palestinian partner?” There is only one narrative now, sustained by groups like J Street, media giants like the NY Times, and many others:
The suffering, blameless Palestinians and the brutal heartless Israelis. There is no point in reiterating or tabulating the multiple points of pain and resentment on both sides, but I would ask where in this debate is an acknowledgement of the long standing history of Palestinian failure? In 1948, after partition, there was a war, and the Israelis prevailed over Palestinian fighters and the armies of several arab states. What do you think would have happened to the Israelis if they had lost? Would there have been enough dead jews to draw world sympathy? But, what have the Palestinians created since that time? Supported by the UN and arab countries happy not to take any responsibility for their lives, Palestinians have been encouraged to sit in refugee camps with their ”keys” anticipating a return to land and houses that they lost. This was always a fantasy, and the years of airplane highjackings, suicide bombings, guerilla war, missiles and tunnels systems have produced what? And of course successive Israeli governments have brutally taken advantage of their incompetence, hatred, and rage. Perhaps there is now an opportunity to establish a Palestinian state, but given the complete absence of "credible Palestinan partners,” (20 years of Mahmoud Abbas!), and an ideology built on resentment and victimization honed over many years, people are entitled to hope, but why believe anything will fundamentally change? The narrative is now baked in. The Palestinians have their “nakba” and the Israelis have theirs (called the Holocaust) but the jews have spread and prospered over the earth building and creating, and the Palestinians have produced what? For good and for ill, much is expected of jews. Perhaps because Palestinians are defined so much by their pain, nothing is expected of them.
Dayenu.
The Palestinians created a great deal. Left as refugees in tents, they built high-rise apartments to house so many people in so little space, built schools, universities, hospitals, and some of the best medical schools in the world. My own doctor comes from there, and he's the best we have ever had in our region. And this has been in spite of being repressed, not even allowed to export the oranges they raised, forced to cut the crowns off the tomatoes they raised so they would spoil and no one would buy them.
Do the human tragedies for non-Jews in Israel ever end?
"Report: US-Backed Gaza Aid Foundation to Close Under Peace Plan"
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/u-s-israel-gaza/2025/10/16/id/1230601/
Why do you call it the "23 state solution"? Explain please.
Hi Steve - this post lays out the 23 state solution idea - our way of conveying that we need to be pursuing a regional comprehensive solution that incorporates establishing a Palestinian state while paving the way to full normalization of Israel's relations with its neighbors. https://open.substack.com/pub/jstreetdotorg/p/the-23-state-solution?r=7tj1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you. Very helpful.
This is well written and carefully crafted from a pro-Israel perspective. But it ignores the fact that Israel is hated more than ever globally; and anti-Semitism has reached levels that have not been seen since World War II, with much worse yet to come. No Jew is safe anywhere, which is tragic.
Even worse is the likelihood that "Osama bin Laden 2.0" is plotting a nation-ending EMP Attack or similar assault against Israel, to achieve immortality. And yes, at least nine nations have nuclear weapons (e.g., Pakistan, India, Russia); and it's a buyer's market. Money talks.
October 7th underscored the fact that Israeli intelligence was nonexistent; its Mossad was sound asleep; and its Iron Dome was porous at best. To many, Israel has been a cancer on the world since 1948. When the photos and other indicia of Israel's war crimes and yes, Genocide become available, the global reaction may be uncontrollable.
See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ ("Is Israel Doomed?") and https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration_second_term/voter_support_for_israel_declines ("Voter Support for Israel Declines")