nothing is more disingenuous and fallacious than the statement of susan rice at the un, concerning this rudimentary proto-recognition of the palestinian territories, that the us opposes it because the two-state solution 'can only emerge from direct negotiations with the israeli government.' um, ok, so why is this incompatible with that? it's completely irrelevant. if we support palestinian statehood, we should be happy to endorse this little symbol of its possibility. this only constitutes a 'barrier to negotions' (the israeli formulation) in the sense that it could conceivably give the palestinians some little bit of leverage. of course, the israelis will only negotiate on a completely asssymmetrical basis. even then there's no chance they will agree to statehood.
the truth is that we oppose palestinian statehood until the israelis endorse it, which is, i predict, never. the israeli negotiating position is ridiculous; they certainly do not have any interest in palestinian statehood, but they're constantly pretending to endorse the two-state solution. you can't talk to people when they're just yapyaping like this. they'll say anything. their actual strategy is to represent their policy as being the opposite of what their policy is in fact. let's say they have mixed succes in concealing their actual policies, but there's no sense talking to them because what they say is always the opposite of what they do. how it could possibly be in our interest to echo this line of jive is a question i leave to the professionals. i said the same last year when the thing came up before.
