Mike Huckabee says that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River is “unrealistic.”
Fine, Mike: what are we supposed to do with the Palestinians? If you let them vote in Israel, then Israel will soon be an Arab state. If you don’t, then Israel isn’t a democracy. What’s your solution?
As morally horrific as the settlements are, they are not the cause of the failure to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace. As Robert Malley and Hussein Agha conceded last week, after more than a decade of denying it, the real cause is the refugee question, which the Palestinians have so far given little indication that they are willing to compromise on.
But that hardly means that Israel should violate moral principles and commit national suicide in the meantime — no matter how much Huckabee wants them to.
In the wake of the Six Day War, a young general named Ariel Sharon triumphantly reported to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol that the military victory ensured Israel’s dominance of the region.
“Fine, Arik,” Eshkol is reported to have said. “But what are we going to do with all these Arabs?”
More than four decades later, no one has answered Eshkol’s question.