(Editor’s note: this post has been stirring around for about six weeks; I put it on the backburner after a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. I was inspired to resurrect and expand on this message by this Volokh Conspiracy entry contributed by Jonathan Zasloff.)

I’ll admit to being nothing more than a mildly interested outside observer of Israeli politics (extended family and friends notwithstanding). So I had to color myself a bit shocked upon reading this Jerusalem Post piece by Michael Freund, decrying a potential Pax Americana—not because of any deleterious effects on global peace and security, or even opposition to American hegemony per se—but because it would impose a two-state solution on Israel:

… George Bush has now positioned himself, and his presidency, on a clear trajectory. He aims to knock Saddam out of the box in the next few weeks, after which his goal will be to fulfill Yasser Arafat’s lifelong dream of establishing an independent Palestine.

Of course, Bush did stress that the new Palestinian state should be “truly democratic,” but given its track record of violence and corruption over the past decade, chances are that the Palestinian entity-in-the-making will be little more than just another old-style dictatorship.

This cannot be allowed to happen. But unless Israel acts now, it most certainly will.

Now, realistically, what are the alternatives to an independent Palestinian state? Clearly the current Israeli semi-occupation isn’t working. A “single state” solution is a non-starter in terms of domestic governability, absent a program of ethnic cleansing that would undercut U.S. support for Israel and likely encourage yet another war with surrounding Arab states—the current demographics just aren’t sustainable for the Jewish community to be comfortable in a single state. (A “greater Israel” with the Palestinians cowed or pushed out seems to have a great deal of vicarious support from the pro-Israel right in the U.S.; Laurence Simon and Charles Johnson seem to be its most vocal proponents in the blogosphere.) The Jordanians don’t want the West Bank back, for good reason, and it’s hard to think of another country to give it to that would be more acceptable than just letting Arafat run it. Perhaps the most workable alternative to Palestinian statehood is Labor’s “complete separation” plan, but in practice it’s about the same as Palestinian independence, albeit without any external recognition.

Is the “Roadmap”—a term that’s beginning to grate as much as Al Gore’s “lockbox,” by the way—the best way forward? I don’t know. You can make a legitimate argument that requiring parallel steps implies a moral equivalency between the two sides that plainly isn’t present; you can complain that Abu Mazen, the nominee for the prime ministership of the Palestinian Authority, is tainted by his association with terror—as, realistically, any credible Palestinian leader would be by this point; the Good Friday accords required Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams at the table to work, despite both mens’ past apologia for terrorism. But it’s telling that nobody has any better idea: it’s either the Roadmap or more of the intifada, apparently, and thus the Roadmap wins by default.

I tend to agree with Stephen Green’s take on the meaning of the appointment of Abu Mazen as Palestinian prime minister; on the one hand, there’s the concern that it’s all another Arafat shell game, but on the other it’s fairly clear that the intifada just ain’t working. The presence of over 200,000 U.S. personnel within a 400 mile radius of Ramallah may also have also had a strongly clarifying effect on the minds of the Palestinain Authority higher-ups—it probably doesn’t hurt that a lot of people have the (IMHO wrong) impression that there’s a cabal of bloodthirsty neocons in Washington just waiting for an excuse to wipe the PLO, Hezbollah, Hamas, and PIJ from the face of the earth.

I largely agree as well that the main problem isn’t so much the Palestinians as their enablers in the European Commission, most notably Chris “I used to be for the rule of law, but fuck it” Patten. If the EU can get its own house in order, I suspect the Palestinians, once faced with the full economic consequences of their leaders’ stupidity, will fall into line in short order.

Previously blogged here.