Obama Donors Aren’t Rushing to Aid Clinton?

Now you tell me, did anyone expect different?  Between the fact that the last few months of the campaign were an  unnecessary waste of scarce resources (ours!), the costs were apparently  born only so Clinton could continue to act like she might be president for a few more weeks.

What a motivation to donate that produces in all of us…!

You know, the ones who have to work two jobs just to pay the health insurance and the gas.

The Clintons made more than $20 mil last year.

Why should I or anyone else subsidize her ego expenses?

July 9, 2008

Obama Donors Aren’t Rushing to Aid Clinton

By PATRICK HEALY

A prominent donor to Senator Barack Obama recently sent an e-mail plea to other supporters, asking them — for the sake of Democratic unity — to write checks to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to help retire her $23 million in campaign debt.

Some of the replies are unprintable, given the coarse language, the donor said. A sampling of others included:

“Why would I help pay off debts that Hillary amassed simply to keep damaging Senator Obama?”

“Gas prices are up, the markets are in turmoil, my kid’s fall tuition bill is coming soon. Writing checks to politicians I don’t like is not at the top of my list.”

“Not a penny for that woman. Or her husband. Or — god forbid — Mark Penn,” a reference to Mrs. Clinton’s former senior strategist, whose firm is still owed several million dollars for work that included aggressive attacks on Mr. Obama.

As Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton prepare for their first joint fund-raisers to benefit the Obama campaign, in New York City on Wednesday and Thursday, their two camps are straining under the weight of continued resentments, recriminations and feelings that remain raw since the long primary battle.

Mr. Obama has asked his top donors to help raise money for her debt, and so far they have come up with less than $100,000 (though more in pledges), Clinton campaign officials said — a “paltry sum,” in the words of one.

Several Obama donors said in interviews that they were balking at Mr. Obama’s call for help because they believed Mrs. Clinton accumulated most of her debts after she had lost any mathematical chance of winning the nomination and was hanging on only in hopes of an Obama collapse. The idea of helping her now — and lining the pockets of Mr. Penn, a reviled figure in the Obama camp — is galling to them, they said, especially at a time when they say any available money should go to defeating Senator John McCain and the Republicans in November.

While no other presidential candidate has ever amassed so much personal and campaign debt en route to losing the nomination as has Mrs. Clinton, both Clinton and Obama donors say the larger problem for Democrats is that if the Obama camp is seen as unhelpful, Mrs. Clinton, her husband and their supporters could prove something less than a force for unity.

Among the complaints from Obama campaign officials is that Mrs. Clinton’s expectation for help has been a moving target; in other words, it is unclear how much money from Obama supporters will be enough to satisfy the Clintons. Even Clinton officials and donors were at a loss to specify a number, saying only that Mrs. Clinton was helping Mr. Obama with the understanding that he would do more for her.

“There is no lack of emotion among some supporters of both candidates, but what I think the sensible elements of good will are trying to achieve is debt relief for Hillary consistent with getting Barack elected president,” said Steven Rattner, a New York investment banker and leading fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, who is working with both camps to help Mrs. Clinton retire her debt.

The bitterness in the Clinton camp about the primary battle is well known, but several Clinton donors and campaign officials said a deeper issue remained unsettled: The belief — or, perhaps, the perception — that Mr. Obama and his aides are half-hearted in their efforts to help Mrs. Clinton and include her top donors on his leadership team.

Some of them griped that major Clinton donors were not being invited to crucial fund-raising meetings; were not being made to feel that they would receive credit for helping Mr. Obama win in November; and were not being given titles within the Obama campaign. An Obama aide said it was still early in the integration process of the two campaigns; he also added that the Obama operation was not as title-driven as the Clinton operation, which had various donors serving as “chairs,” “co-chairs” and “Hillraisers.”

Clinton donors and campaign officials say they remain surprised — and, among some, offended — that Mr. Obama has refused to ask his entire list of donors, more than 1.5 million people, to send $5, $10 or more to chip away at Mrs. Clinton’s debt. (Obama officials said they did not want to distract their donors for the main task at hand, raising money to defeat Mr. McCain.)

“The Obama effort hasn’t yielded much, but we hope it will increase,” said Alan Patricof, a top Clinton fund-raiser and family friend.

“I think most people — I can’t say everyone — thinks that helping Barack is the best way to get help from the Obama camp to help retire her debt, which is a major source of concern for her right now,” Mr. Patricof added.

Mrs. Clinton owes an estimated $12 million to consultants and vendors, like Mr. Penn; she also lent her campaign more than $11 million. That $11 million is listed as a debt, though Mrs. Clinton has told her fund-raisers that she does not expect them or the Obama camp to repay her.

Clinton campaign officials estimated that the millions owed to Mr. Penn and his team was by far the largest part of Mrs. Clinton’s debt, though they emphasized that the money was not only going for Mr. Penn’s time but also for the services provided by his colleagues and his polling and strategy firm. Clinton officials said they could not provide a breakdown of those amounts.

“We’re focused on the vendor debts, especially the Kinkos, the truck drivers and the small-business folks who helped us along the way,” said Jonathan Mantz, the Clinton campaign’s finance director.

Orin Kramer, a leading Obama fund-raiser, said he was working with other members of Mr. Obama’s national finance team, like Frank Brosens and Alan Solomont, as well as Mr. Rattner, Mr. Patricof and other Clinton donors to deal with the debt issue.

The negotiations between the Clinton and Obama camps are so delicate that it is one of the issues being managed by Robert Barnett, the high-powered Washington lawyer that Mrs. Clinton asked to help structure a political relationship between them for the general election.

According to several Democrats who have spoken to Mr. Barnett, he has counseled the Clinton camp that honey will work better than vinegar in the debt talks. But Clinton donors say it is an open question whether the Clintons believe they should play hardball — signaling that they will not rally enthusiastically behind Mr. Obama unless he does more on the debt situation — or appear agreeable with the expectation that the money will ultimately come through.

A crucial test will come at the fund-raisers in New York this week, both sides said. Mr. Obama is expected to ask supporters there to help Mrs. Clinton, and Clinton donors said they were hoping for a great deal more money to come in from people heeding his call.

The New York events are on behalf of the Obama campaign, his aides said; Mrs. Clinton will not receive a cut of the take, but rather, in theory, benefit afterward from Obama donors who decide to help her. Mr. Obama and his wife have each already written checks for $2,300, the maximum donation, to Mrs. Clinton.

“Senator Obama and his staff and his supporters are working very hard on debt relief for Senator Clinton, and will continue to in any way that works best,” said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.

Requiem for a Truth Teller…

One of the last surviving heroes from my youth died today.

All of us knew George Carlin as a side-splitting comedian who always seemed to hit whatever he spoke about dead on. One of my other heroes, Robert Anton Wilson who passed away two years ago used to call him “America’s greatest philosopher”.

That’s more than a joke.

All of us learned deep truths about ourselves and our society from the man.  It wasn’t only the words he used, but the effect of those words on our own thought processes and reality tunnels.

Socrates was a teacher and an iconoclast; he dared to question the status quo. He taught by asking questions, building one question upon another until the truth emerged.   He never “taught” a class or wrote a book either.

WEBSTER‘S Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines Iconoclast as:

1. A breaker or destroyer of images or idols; a determined enemy of idol worship.

2. One who exposes or destroys impositions or shams; one who attacks cherished beliefs; a radical.

That was Carlin’s approach.  By using humor he gained the widest possible audience to sew his doubts about conventional wisdom on just about every subject.

He kept doing it, too.  His last HBO special entitled “It’s Bad For You” aired a few months ago. I can think of no one, other than Timothy Leary, who had a bigger effect on an entire generation’s perception of reality.

John Stewart and Bill Maher are today’s “Truth Tellers” and we are lucky to have them.  They are the only ones who have been shouting about the Emperor’s clothes while the MSM looked the other way.

But Carlin barely bothered with politics.  Too easy.  He went after the big ones like religion and our own ridiculous, self-serving patterns of behavior.

Here’s a clip of my favorite of his “religion routines”.

Those who want more can watch his last one hour HBO special, complete at the link below.

Watch George Carlin… It’s Bad for Ya! (200 Online Here!

“Not Just irresponsible… It’s OUTRAGEOUS !”

Barack speaking about McCain’s economic policy. Great 2 minute clip….

GOBAMA!

Barack talks to all of us who made it happen…

A thirteen minute vid really worth seeing. This is an “inside” speech. Gentle and thoughtful.

Thank you Barack. That’s why I started this blog.

GOBAMA 08

$45 trillion needed to combat warming

$45 trillion needed to combat warming

By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 6, 7:06 AM ET

TOKYO - The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

“Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale,” IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.

Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.

The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.

The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.

Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, the report said.

That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.

The second scenario also calls for an accelerated ramping up of development of so-called “carbon capture and storage” technology allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them underground.

The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.

In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector.

Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005 demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials said.

“This development is clearly not sustainable,” said Dolf Gielen, an IEA energy analyst and leader for the project.

Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment — about $27 trillion — would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy technologies developed by governments and the private sector.

“If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector,” Gielen said.

Mofaz: Israel attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’ if nuclear program continued

Mofaz: Israel attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’ if nuclear program continued

By Reuters

Tags: Shaul Mofaz

An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of Western sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, Transportation Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said Friday. “If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable,” said the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff who later served as defense minister. Advertisement It was the most explicit threat yet against Iran from a member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, which, like the Bush administration, has preferred to hint at force as a last resort should United Nations Security Council sanctions fail to achieve the desired abandonment of nuclear development by Tehran. Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, has defied Western pressure to abandon its uranium enrichment projects. The leadership in Tehran has also threatened to retaliate against Israel - believed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal - and U.S. targets in the Gulf for any attack on Iranian turf. Mofaz also said in the interview that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, “would disappear before Israel does.” Mofaz’s remarks came as he and several other senior members of Olmert’s Kadima Party prepare for a possible run for top office should a corruption scandal force the Israeli prime minister to step down. Iranian-born Mofaz has been a main party rival of the Israeli prime minister, particularly following the 2006 elections when Olmert was forced to hand the defence portfolio to Labor, his main coalition partner, at Mofaz’s expense. Mofaz, who is also designated as a deputy prime minister, has remained privy to Israel’s defense planning. He is a member of Olmert’s security cabinet and leads regular strategic coordination talks with the U.S. State Department. Israel sent warplanes to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981. A similar Israeli sortie over Syria last September razed what the U.S. administration said was a nascent nuclear reactor built with North Korean help. Syria denied having any such facility. Independent analysts have questioned, however, whether Israel’s armed forces can take on Iran alone, as its nuclear sites are numerous, distant and well-fortified

Limited US attack on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases in sight

June 2, 2008, 11:31 AM (GMT+02:00)

Our Washington sources report that president George W. Bush is closer than ever before to ordering a limited missile-air bombardment of the IRGC-al Qods Brigade’s installations in Iran. It is planned to target training camps and the munitions factories pumping fighters, missiles and roadside bombs to the Iraqi insurgency, Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza.

Iran is geared up for counteraction.

US intelligence estimates that Tehran’s counteraction will likewise be on a limited scale and therefore any US-Iranian military encounter will not be allowed to explode into a major confrontation. Because this US assault is not planned to extend to Iran’s nuclear installations, Tehran is not expected to hit back at distant American targets in the Persian Gulf or at Israel.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report, however, that Iran’s military preparations for countering an American attack are far broader than envisaged in Washington. Tehran would view a US attack on the IRGC bases as a casus belli and might react in ways and on a scale unanticipated in Washington.

Two days ago, Iran’s defense minister Gen. Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar warned: “Iran’s Armed Forces are fully prepared to counter any military attack with any intensity and to make the enemy regret initiating any such incursions.”

According to DEBKAfile’s Iranian and military sources, the IRGC had by mid-May completed their preparations for a US missile, air or commando assault on their command centers and bases in reprisal for Iranian intervention in Iraq.

These preparations encompass al Qods’ arms, most of them undercover, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Sudan. At home, the Revolutionary Guards have evacuated their key bases together with manpower and equipment to regular army sites or temporary quarters in villages located in remote corners of eastern and northern Iran. Their main headquarters and central training center at the Imam Ali University in northern Tehran are deserted except for sentries on the gates.

Indoctrination seminaries and dormitories hosting fighting strength in the holy town of Qom are empty, as is the Manzariyah training center east of the capital.

Deserted too is the main training camp near Isfahan for insurgents and terrorists from Iraq, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It is here that they take courses from friendly al Qods training staff on how to sabotage strategic targets such as routes, bridges and military installations, and the activation of the extra-powerful roadside bombs (EFPs) which have had such a deadly effect on American troops in Iraq.

Debka

Army Sgt. Matthis Chiroux Refuses His Deployment to Iraq

Iraq Veteran Publicly Refuses to Deploy to Iraq in the halls of Congress

By Erin Thompson

Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, a 24-year-old who spent nearly five years serving in the U.S. Army, publicly refused his orders to deploy to Iraq today. Chiroux made the statement in the rotunda of the Cannon Building of the House of Representatives, just minutes after 8 members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War testified about the realities of the U.S. occupation of Iraq to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Keywords: Analysis, Bronx, War & Peace, Resource Wars,

Chiroux, a student of political science in his first semester at Brooklyn College, received an honorable discharge last July after working as a photojournalist for the U.S. military in Japan, Europe, the Philippines and Afghanistan. In February Chiroux received notice that he must report to the U.S. Army in June to be deployed to Iraq.

Chiroux made the statement flanked by a dozen members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. “I would like to let Matthis and everyone here know that IVAW stands in support and solidarity with your decision, which I know is very difficult and very personal,” said IVAW Executive Director Kelly Dougherty. “IVAW’s strategy to end the occupation in Iraq is to encourage and organize resistance and opposition to this occupation from within the ranks and from the recent veterans.”

Statement:

“Good afternoon, my name is Sergeant Matthis Chiroux and I served as an army photo journalist until being honorably discharged last summer after over four years of service in Afghanistan and Europe and the Phillipines.

As an army journalist whose job it was to college and filter service members’ stories, I heard many a stomach-churning testimony of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq. For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes. Never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand. In February, I received a letter from the Army, ordering my return to active duty, with the purpose of mobilization in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Thanks in great part to the truths of war being fearlessly spoken by my fellow IVAW members, I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare the military and my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq.

This occupation is unconstitutional and illegal, and I hereby lawfully refuse to participate as I will surely be a party to war crimes. Furthermore, deployment and support of illegal war violates all of my core values as a human being. But in keeping with those values, I choose to remain in the United States to defend myself from charges brought by the Army, if they so wish to pursue them.

I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation.”

Erin Thompson

Thoughtful, if gloomy Arab Israeli analysis

Israel won the wars, lost the peace
By Mark LeVine

Soldiers pay homage to Jews killed in the battle for Jerusalem during Israel’s 1948 war at a military cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem [GALLO/GETTY] On a flight home from a lecture at the University of Arizona on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, I happened to sit next to an elderly woman whose accent, along with the Hebrew prayer card in her hand, suggested she was Israeli. Our conversation during the flight epitomised the obstacles that continue to block a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The woman was born in Poland and had lived through the Holocaust. “Even 60 years later it’s like a dream you can’t believe,” she explained when I asked her if she had still been in Poland when the war began. “You arrive and they send you immediately to the showers; you never knew which shower it was - to clean you up or gas you.” After surviving Auschwitz, she was imprisoned in two more concentration camps, and then sent to a munitions factory in Germany later bombed by the Soviets. “We were running through the streets alongside animals who escaped from the zoo next door when it was bombed. We were pulling the flesh off the burned animals because we were so hungry. It was like a barbecue.” Somehow, she managed to survive these horrors, as well as one of the infamous “death marches” that preceded the war’s end, only to face a pogrom when she returned to her village in Poland in 1946. After these attacks, her remaining family fled Poland. “Those who could, went to the United States, the rest went to Palestine.” Israel’s collective identity The woman’s story is almost surreal in its horror. But such stories have been seared into Israel’s collective identity. These memories are so powerful that even though few Israelis today lived through the Holocaust, they are a crucial reason why the possibility of peace with Palestinians remains so elusive. It does not matter to the collective Israeli psyche that there has been a generation of peace with Egypt, a decade-and-a half with Jordan, and strong relations with Turkey and Morocco. Nor does it matter that there is declared acceptance of Israel’s existence by most Arab states. When the subject of the peace process inevitably came up in our conversation, my companion asked me incredulously: “Do you think they [Arabs] will just let us live?” This psychology has not just made peace hard for Israelis to believe in, but by reinforcing the Israeli/Jewish sense of besiegement it has helped ensure the futility of Palestinian resistance - especially violent opposition - against the occupation. It has also enabled the use of “security” considerations to justify an occupation which has had little to do with security, and everything to do with cementing Jewish control over as much of Israel’s biblical heartland as possible. Historical schizophrenia Israeli border police visit the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem But it is not only the collective memory of the Holocaust, along with the nature of Palestinian resistance to the occupation, that has helped produce a high level of fear and distrust in the Israeli psyche. As important is the moral and historical schizophrenia which stem from the reality that Israel was born out of the displacement of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs. It matters little that the overwhelming body of scholarship on the Palestinian refugee problem, much of it produced by Israeli scholars, accepts that Palestinians were made refugees by the deliberate actions of a Zionist/Israeli leadership. Whether it was newly emptied Palestinian homes in Jaffa filled with Jewish refugees or national parks being established on the rubble of entire Galilee villages, the spectre of Palestine Lost so haunts Israel’s national psyche that it takes an unceasing process of willful forgetting to ensure the continued erasure of Palestinians from the Israeli landscape. Despite all its accomplishments, its military and economic might, superpower patronage, and acceptance across most of the region, Israel’s sense of rootedness remains fragile. So fragile, in fact, that to entertain the idea of culpability in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem - the “original sin” that made Israel’s establishment as an overwhelmingly Jewish majority state possible - would open a Pandora’s box of self-doubt and recrimination that would threaten its viability as a “democratic Jewish state” today. Israel’s dilemma Israel’s separation wall cuts a path through Palestinian olive groves [GALLO/GETTY] Other settler colonial societies have faced similar dilemmas. But while the successful “extermination” of the native populations of the United States (to use historian Benny Morris’s terminology) made possible an open and confident American nationalism, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s non-Jewish population was never completed. The continued presence of millions of Palestinians within and next to Israel has made it very hard for Israelis to feel confident in their control of the land. Today, the non-Jewish population of mandate Palestine has achieved a rough parity with the Jewish population. Potentially more threatening to the Jewish identity of the state, according to some Israeli scholars, is that within a generation Palestinian citizens of Israel will come perilously close to outnumbering their Jewish compatriots. If and when that moment arrives, Israel’s existence as both a Jewish and democratic state will end. Yet in a certain sense, the Jewish-but-democratic equation has always been a paradox imperfectly resolved. Even during the best of times, Israel has never been a fully democratic state, except for Jews of European descent. Jews from Middle Eastern countries were excluded from the reins of political and economic power until relatively recently and have yet to achieve parity with Ashkenazis. Palestinian citizens lived under military rule until 1966; and though they have guaranteed equal political rights and can serve in the armed forces (which most Bedouin and Druze, but few Palestinians do), they remain legally and institutionally discriminated against. Problematic democracy IN VIDEO Israel’s immigration issue This is no more evident than the crucial issues of access to land and public resources, while suffering regular surveillance and harassment by Israel’s security services. If Palestinian citizens do not live equally under the law, then Israel cannot accurately be referred to as the “Middle East’s only Western-style democracy”. A more accurate description of Israel would be that it is an “ethnocracy,” a formally democratic state where ethnicity and religion legally determine the degree of access to the full benefits of citizenship. The “democracy” description becomes more problematic when the reality of Israel’s de facto sovereignty over the Occupied Territories during the last 40 years is taken into account. Since 1967, and even during the Oslo years (1993-2000), the Israeli government has controlled every major aspect of Palestinian life without granting the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza any political, civil, economic or cultural rights, effectively disenfranchising them for two generations. One of the reasons for the failure of Oslo was that Israel retained almost full control over the Palestinian economy, borders, resources and security despite the establishment of a veneer of democracy with the Palestinian Authority and the Legislative Council. The sheer inertia of the occupation’s massive institutional and geographical infrastructure, coupled with the gnawing fear that even if peace were possible today Israel would remain vulnerable to the demographic time bomb tomorrow, helps explain why Israel intensified rather than dismantled the infrastructure of the occupation. It doubled the settler population, widely expanding the area of Palestinian land under its control while continuing to destroy the foundations of Palestinian agriculture by seizing land, uprooting countless trees, and destroying thousands of homes. In the minds of many Israeli leaders, peace was ultimately a mirage that would vanish into renewed existential conflict the moment it was reached. Inseparable In depth None of this should come as a surprise to Israelis or analysts of the conflict. A generation ago, Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti warned Israelis (in his widely publicised 1987 West Bank Data Base Project report) that Israel and the Occupied Territories were already too intertwined geographically, economically and economically to ever separate them again. As important as Benvenisti’s recognition of the depth of the Israeli occupation by the 1980s was his realisation that the goals of successive Israeli governments never included annexing the whole of the West Bank. Rather, “the Israeli body-politic is precisely where it wants to stay. The present, fluid, amorphic situation is preferable and suits everybody. A better method than ‘annexation’ has been found to integrate and segregate at the same time: to integrate the territories for Israeli interests … and segregate the Palestinian population to avoid any burdens (citizenship, extension of Israeli welfare system, free political expression).” These are among the most prescient words ever written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they reveal that half a decade before Oslo, Israel had already achieved its primary objectives in the settlement process. Israeli leaders had found a formula to maintain permanent control over the desired areas of the West Bank without fomenting overwhelming Palestinian opposition. But if Israel’s negotiating strategy during Oslo mirrored the older strategy of drawing out negotiations until facts on the ground made Palestinian independence on any terms but Israel’s impossible, the reality is that in winning the war, Israel lost its chance for peace. Viable Palestinian state? The minimum requirements for establishing a viable Palestinian state - dismantling most of the settlement infrastructure to allow territorial contiguity in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), full Palestinian control over their economy, and (at the very least) an honest accounting of Israel’s role in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem - can no longer be met. Quite simply, doing so would entail a far higher political, social and economic cost than would the continuation of the occupation, with its manageable level of violence. This reality has cast a pall over the community of Israeli and Palestinian scholars who have devoted much of the last two decades trying to envision scenarios for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. A little over five years ago, at the height of the al-Aqsa intifada, most of my colleagues on both sides of the Green Line remained convinced that a two-state solution was the only viable solution to the conflict, even as many supported the principle of a bi-national state. Today, the consensus is clearly that conditions for a two-state solution no longer exist. But at the same time a workable binational option seems equally implausible to envision in the near future. “Maybe in 50-60 years,” one Palestinian colleague mused when I spoke to him recently; precisely when the demographic balance is tipped far in the Palestinians’ favour. Imagining new scenarios Question of the week Now the conflict is entering its seventh decade, can it ever be resolved? Send us your feedback… For sure, the fraying of the multi-ethnic and religious fabrics of Lebanon and Iraq do not offer much hope for a shared Israel/Palestine. Yet despite the odds, Palestinian and Israeli activists and scholars continue to imagine new scenarios for achieving peace, justice and democracy for both peoples. Fifteen years after Shimon Peres announced the birth of a “New Middle East,” in which national borders and identities would matter less than cultural capital and economic ingenuity, perhaps the best anyone can hope for is what Israeli geographer Oren Yiftachel describes as a “gradual binationalism”. This would then open up the space between the two and one-state solutions through a “reintegration of Israel-Palestine” - psychologically, as much as politically. “Of course, this is an (almost) illusionary vision,” Yiftachel is the first to admit. “I am not optimistic, but I feel it is important to continue and air options that people can imagine, and not succumb to the gloom and doom path of ‘creeping apartheid’ in which we are walking.” If the emerging generation of Israelis and Palestinians can begin to think outside the nationalist and religious framework that has doomed older generations to perpetual conflict, the vision of Yiftachel and his Israeli and Palestinian comrades could take root before the sheer weight of the occupation erodes whatever glimmer of hope for peaceful coexistence remains. It is undoubtedly a long shot, but the alternative is violence on a scale that can no longer be managed by either side, with catastrophic results for Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East as a whole. Mark LeVine is professor of history at the University of California Irvine and author or editor of half a dozen books dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and globalisation in the Middle East. He is also a contributing editor for Tikkun magazine. Al Jazera

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