The Democrats Are Not a Pro-Palestinian Party
By Eric Levitz
December 30, 2016
10:32 a.m.
On Thursday, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith wrote an obituary for the bipartisan consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In it, Smith argues that Donald Trumps zero-sum worldview will speed his partys transition away from the two-state solution and toward the ideal of a single Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
The concept of Palestinian Arab was created to exist only in opposition to Israel and with them its always been a zero-sum game, Jeff Ballabon, a lawyer and Republican activist who has worked for years to build support for a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, told Smith. And because its a zero-sum game its never really been about negotiating issues its always been: Somebodys going to be ethnically cleansed and it aint going to be me.
That reasoning comports with Trumps understanding of global trade (substitute fleeced for ethnically cleansed in Ballabons last sentence, and you have the CliffNotes version of the president-elects trade platform). And, as Smith astutely notes, the one-state position is of a piece with Trumps Islamophobic brand of nationalism, which imagines an intractable clash of civilizations between the Muslim world and the West.
Considering this, it isnt surprising that Trump would pick a man who thinks liberal Jews are worse than kapos as his ambassador to Israel or that he would spearhead his partys apoplectic response to last weeks U.N. resolution, which merely reiterated the illegality of Israels West Bank settlements.
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