Two State Solution

 Good Yglesias is back with his absolutely correct take on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian morass. He can be a little to glib about "realities" but in this case it does help that Israel exists and isn't going anywhere. Hell, even Erik Loomis - a fairly doctrinaire economic leftist - agrees that Israel's existence isn't really negotiable. States exist and they aren't going to commit suicide, which is what would happen to Israel if there were (as Yglesias puts it) some utopian outcome of a single, multi-ethnic state. The vapidity of "to the river to the sea" as a slogan is that you are calling either for the ethnic cleansing of the Jews or a multiethnic state...that would lead to the ethnic cleansing of one or the other group. 

Yglesias covers the numerous missed opportunities for a two-state solution over the past 30 years pretty well. It's probably about 50% Palestinian-40% Israeli-10% sudden departure of Israeli leaders that has prevented it from happening. The framework, however, is there.

The one thing that I do feel pretty strongly about - and this goes back to my anger over Turkish resistance to a Kurdish state in what is now Iraq - is a sort of bullshit zero sum thinking. The existence of Palestine (or Iraqi Kurdistan) is not a defeat for Israel (Turkey). In fact, states are largely more responsible because they have credible "skin in the game". A true Palestinian state - responsible to the Palestinian people - would not attack Israel, because the example of Gaza is real and painful. Hamas is perfectly willing to sacrifice civilians because their moral and political calculus is different. Dead Palestinians are the point if you're Hamas. 

A Palestinian state is not a threat to Israel; non-state entities like Hamas are.  The only way to rescue this conflict from simple moral atrocity is to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank (Gaza TBD later). I worry that America's blank check stance towards Israel - even as it's led by the moral vacuum that is Netanyahu - won't accomplish that.