Where to begin. How about: if Greater Israel is dead, why is there such enormous political pressure in Israel to defend every single Greater Israel settlement and expand many more? If the settlements are a “side-show,” why have they doubled in size in the last ten years? For that matter, if they are a trivial side-show, why not just agree to get rid of them in a grand bargain that makes a Sunni-Israeli alliance against Iran more feasible? The answer:
Because the Netanyahu coalition would collapse. And it’s hard to see why a coalition could collapse over a trivial side-show. Then observe Diehl’s seamless pivot to Israel’s demands – that a two-state solution be put on hold until war has been declared on Iran, something that would ratchet up the global religious war to unheard of heights, and destroy any chance of a two-state solution for ever. And the notion that Obama is not concerned with the Iran threat is absurd: why else the new missile shield? why else the mass of military goodies for Israel as a bribe? why was Clinton poring over security details for the Eastern boundary of the new Palestine?I have a new test for neocon commentators: if they say the peace process won’t work, what they really mean is that it suddenly might just work. And they desperately want to stop it.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/excuses-for-israel.html
