Two hard to understand stories from Israeli newspapers today - one, that American intelligence officials have warned Israel not to trust Trump administration with sensitive intel. This is bizarre - for starters, who leaked it to the newspaper that reported it? If Netanyahu, he would only do so if he didn’t take it seriously and wanted to embarrass Obama; if Obama, you would only do it if indeed it wasn’t serious and meant only to embarrass Trump. Certainly, if Obama sincerely believed it a serious threat you wouldn't want it made public because that would undermine the efficaciousness of the deceit - and likewise if Netanyahu viewed it as a serious threat that would pose a huge problem and it buggers credulity to think he’d address such a sinister problem by leaking knowledge of it to the press. So bizarre.
The other story is that apparently Boris Johnson helped draft the pernicious UN anti-settlements resolution and voted [of course] in favor of it without informing May that that’s what he intended to do. That makes no sense and is almost impossible to believe - how could there be such a disconnect between a prime minister and a deputy sworn to serve her agenda? Your foreign minister goes rogue on something as big as that? Just doesn’t seem possible - hardly know what to say. Certainly explains May’s press conference after the resolution had been passed that strongly suggested she did not agree with it nor the infamous speech Kerry disgorged afterwards. Again, bizarre.
[but tell me, how is it, given how you’ve talked about Jerusalem, that you think Netanyahu, who endorses continued Israel sovereignty over Jerusalem, not a threat to the two state solution? First off, like Netanyahu and the Israeli right, I see a two state solution as unlikely, if not impossible because Palestinians will never agree to anything that Israel could even come close to agreeing to - and that’s because the useful idiots of the west have implicitly and now explicitly let the Palestinians know that their political campaign to delegitimize Israel is working and therefore there’s no motivation for them to cozy up to a deal that would be anywhere even remotely acceptable to Israel. Regardless, even if that were not so clearly the case, at this point Palestinians, and most especially their corrupt political class, are way too invested in their current strategy and way of thinking to ever depart from it. And furthermore, no one has even come close to answering the question of, given some remote possibility of a two state agreement, what the hell do you do about Hamas? And so a two state solution is not gonna happen and therefore the settlements and how Netanyahu et al talk about Jerusalem is not really salient. But, if one were to try and imagine such a thing being possible, continued Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem would not fly - but clinging to the notion of it would be a nice concession one could make towards an eventual agreement - and I would guess some people on the right, possibly even Netanyahu, view it in those terms - but of course would never admit to that. To me, if one tries to imagine a two state solution, for it to work it would have to involve dividing Jerusalem roughly between east and west, but with the Temple Mount and all nearby neighbourhoods carved out of that to form a mini state administered by some international body that guarantees equal access and privileges to all three religions. I think many Israelis would agree to something like that, but the Palestinians never - and the thought of Jews once again praying on the Temple Mount would drive many Muslims towards an apoplectic delirium of outrage. And so, unless the Israeli far left somehow regains a governing foothold and shows a willingness to capitulate entirely, which could only happen if Israel was on the edge of extinction anyways due to some Obama like betrayal down the road - well, you’re just never gonna see a two state solution]