I don't think you're going to be able to get that 30% of Americans who've changed their perception of Israel back. As a former strong supporter of Israel, I can say that my opinion had been slipping for years.
But the last few years of war crimes, gaslighting, and a middle finger to everyone on Earth who objects isn't something we're likely to forget anytime soon.
And I firmly believe that sentiment is going to partially shape American politics over the next two decades at least.
There’s American popular opinion and then there’s the actual voters and electorates who actively influence policy. I’m not talking AIPAC or even American Jews, the big decider will be the trends in the Evangelical world. CUFI has more members than there are Jews on Earth. The Evangelical vote numbers in the tens of millions.
The average Palestinian supporter is kind of a cause du jour type and will move on with the news cycle.
Jews don’t have the demographics to shape how policy will change and AIPAC is a bunch of pussies. Where America goes with regards to Israel depends on the view of the Evangelicals, which could change.
Eli, I think you’ve identified the distinction that matters. The goal isn’t to persuade Mehdi Hasan. It’s to make Mehdi Hasan less persuasive to everyone else.
I’d add only this: removing Ben-Gvir and Smotrich cuts off an enormous supply of ammunition, but it won’t by itself recover the Americans Israel has lost. Some of that newer 30% are reacting not to anti-Zionist ideology but to what they have seen in Gaza and the West Bank. A new government will need to offer something affirmative as well: confront settler violence, restrain settlement expansion, and make clear that Jewish self-determination and Palestinian political dignity are not mutually exclusive.
That may never change Mehdi Hasan’s mind. But as you say, he was never the audience.
Regardless of who wins the next election in Israel, it will still remain a fact that the US was suckered by Israel into launching a disastrous war against Iran. This will be viewed by Americans as a huge betrayal of trust, probably for decades. I can’t think of any comparable incident in our 250 year history.
Jim, I think this gives Netanyahu too much agency and the United States too little. Netanyahu certainly urged action against Iran, and we can argue about whether that influence was wise or destructive. But “Israel suckered us” is a much stronger claim.
The United States has its own intelligence services, military leadership, national security apparatus, and an elected president who ultimately made the decision. If Trump made a disastrous choice after listening to Netanyahu, responsibility for that choice still belongs to Trump and the American government.
I’m perfectly willing to hold Netanyahu responsible for Netanyahu’s policies. But I don’t think we should make Israel responsible for ours.
I don’t really disagree with you, but for me it makes sense to frame the issue in the context of US politics. Since Obama negotiated the JCPOA, Israel has decisively allied with Republicans and made Democrats their enemy. They’ve also waged a long campaign of trying to pull the US into maximal conflict with Iran, with the ultimate goal of having us join them in a major war. They finally succeeded on Feb 28. It would be insane at this point for Democrats to not see them as their enemy. I agree that Trump has ultimate responsibility, but that’s not inconsistent since I also view him as an enemy of both US and Democratic interests.
I’ve voted Democratic and been pretty pro-Israel all my life. During the latest war, however, we saw an Israeli govt that was constantly urging escalation, willing to blow up the world economy and destroy the gulf states (oil infrastructure, desalinization) in their Ahab-like quest to topple the Iranian regime. It was Trump who wouldn’t go there and backed down. The current Israeli govt has clearly become a menace.
Jim, I think there’s an important distinction in what you just wrote: “the current Israeli government.” That is different from Israel.
I’ve been sharply critical of this government myself. But one of the arguments I made recently in The Phantom Door was that we should be careful not to mistake the present for the permanent. Governments change. Coalitions change. Democracies sometimes correct themselves, and sometimes fail to.
There’s a remarkable coincidence coming this fall. Israel votes on October 27; Americans vote one week later. I have a stake in both outcomes, although only a vote in one.
So I’m quite willing to judge the actions of Netanyahu and his government. I’m much more reluctant to turn that judgment into one about Israel itself. In both countries, I’d rather leave the voters the dignity—and responsibility—of writing the next chapter.
The fact remains that without Netenyahu’s urging, it never would have happened. It’s our fault we elected a dope as president, but Netenyahu took advantage of us and we can blame him for that.
"A betrayal of trust" is , I believe, a misreading and/or poorly worded interpretation of what actually happened - unless you mean that Trump trusted/believed in Netanyahu's prediction of what the attacks against Iran would bring about.
I don't think Netyanyahu tricked Trump into doing something that would "only" benefit Israel while leaving the U.S. "holding the bag." He apparently really (and stupidly) believed the attacks might have actually led to an uprising of the Iranian people and a actual destruction of Iran's nuclear program - results that would have benefited both the U.S. and Israel.
As much as I despise both Netanyahu and Trump, I would have been very happy if the attacks had achieved both of those goals. Tragically, those goals now appear to be even more distant than they were before the war began,
Eisenkot’s formula of “called for separation from the Palestinians through a gradual, supervised process with permanent Israeli security responsibility” sounds like it could be a winner to let people know that Israel has no designs on oppressing Palestinians but also without demanding the withdrawal of ~100k civilians from deeper in Judea and Samaria all at once and without causing a security vacuum by the withdrawal of the IDF
My problem with the current government was encapsulated in the last paragraph of your essay. The settler movement and settler violence is part of an effort to make the West Bank fully Israeli, with isolated pockets of Palestinians. For the last 25 years, the Israelis should have been working to make the West Bank a successful enclave (especially in comparison to Hamas run Gaza) so that Palestinians can focus on their own land and economy and less on Israel. Everything isn't zero sum but it does get treated that way.
I suppose it's not terribly appropriate - or even relevant - to comment on someone's personality, but I literally can't think of anyone who is more over- the- top pompous than Mehdi Hassan. He is so in love with the sound of his own voice!
I second Rewrnzo’s response and would add that the Arab parties are a complex bunch.
First, for the longest time they did not want to sit in coalition; they tend to be much more comfortable in opposition and being anti-government no matter who is in governments, so the phenomenon is bidirectional.
Second, throughout the years some of them identified as anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or openly supported Hamas or the PFLP to the extent the law would allow them, which made them radioactive for coalition.
Third, they tend to represent 7-10% of seats in the Knesset despite Arabs representing 20% of the Israeli electorate, making them less representative of Israeli Arabs than one might think. Arab society in Israel is not a monolith and many Arabs in Israel don’t feel represented by the Arab parties (I’d offer Lourd Atia as a young Arab Israeli who was recently thrusted into advocacy when she had an on-air argument with Ayman Oudeh on the lack of representation of the Arab community in Israel by the Arab parties as a recent high profile example).
Technically, Ra'am was a member of the coalition government from 2021-2022 when Bennett and Lapid were PM. Mansour Abbas was a minister without portfolio.
"The Israeli electorate remains deeply traumatized by October 7, and that is the part Favreau doesn’t grasp. Israelis withdrew from Gaza, understood it as a gesture toward peace, and got October 7."
Part of the solution is demonstrating to Israelis that the Gaza withdrawal was not a gesture towards peace, but an attempt to buy time with the international community (which worked) while decreasing the costs of the occupation (which also somewhat worked).
I don’t think the subjective intent really matters. What still happened is that Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas took over, declared neverending war, the Israelis then instituted an extremely unpopular blockade (vis a vis global opinion), several minor wars, and then October 7 and the subsequent war, which has also been a catastrophe for Israel’s position, from either the right or left perspective. Intent aside it’s powerful evidence that increased autonomy - whatever the intent - leads to both a worse security and worse global PR situation. You can convince people that next time will be different or it’s worth the risk or whatever but that’s where the persuasion has to happen. “Actually you guys only withdrew for cynical reasons to buy time for some other nefarious Zionist plot” is not just insulting it’s non-responsive.
I agree that the Gaza withdrawal shows that increasing autonomy, at least past a certain point, for Palestinians is a bad idea, at least without a genuine partner for peace, but that is the *left wing* position in Israel. The right-wing position is that it shows that Palestinians are uniquely evil, driven purely by antisemitism and must be relentlessly beaten down, or preferably expelled or [wink, wink].
Regarding the motives question, look at like this. Say that there was someone who insisted that you owed him $100,000, and you gave him $5,000 and told him that you were done and didn't want to hear from him again. If he keeps pursuing you and even becomes more hostile, is this evidence that he is just implacably hostile, that the $100,000 is just a pretext and that it's pointless to negotiation with him? Maybe, but I think it's fairly weak evidence. I personally oppose a 2SS because I do believe the maximum we can give is less than the minimum they will accept, but the Gaza withdrawal doesn't provide much evidence for this.
The idea that the Gaza withdrawal shows that all negotiation is pointless is a Right-Wing Israeli argument made by people who (a) oppose negotiation regardless and (b) never actually bothered to understand the rationale of the Gaza withdrawal. Their answer to how Israel was going to continue the occupation of Gaza as the population ballooned to 2 million is no answer because either they are just dumb and don't understand anything or their real answer is genocide. It is popular in Israel more generally, because Israelis are insular, are highly susceptible to flattery, and are really not exposed to a lot of factual information about the history of the conflict. If they were exposed to more information I think they would have less dumb opinions.
To sum up. Clearly the Gaza withdrawal was a failed strategy, but Israelis should understand what it failed at, rather than hallucinating that it failed at some totally other thing that just so happens to make them look uniquely virtuous and their enemies look uniquely vicious. You can try selling that story to the goyim (though it doesn't seem like there's much of a market for it), but don't get high on your own supply.
One problem with your $5,000 analogy is nobody told the Palestinians "Gaza is all you're going to get, now we're square" and that would have been a bizarre inference to make. Certainly this was not how any actors at the time understood it - Sharon had to start a whole new party of the Likud's left faction and Labor's right faction just because his own refused to go along with it. The right wing parties hated it and opposed it bitterly and all of the left wing parties signed up for it. Because everyone understood that if the Gaza withdrawal worked out well it would open the door for further withdrawals.
But the real problem with the analogy is not just that the guy I gave the $5,000 to simply continued to pursue me for the debt - he used the $5,000 to buy a gun and then tried to kill me with it.
Whether or not I should understand this as evidence of this man's implacable hatred for me is one thing (although I think it's pretty clear evidence he's unhinged) but it's certainly strong evidence for the proposition that he'll use any resources I give him to try and kill me, which is a powerful disincentive for me to bargain.
If Hamas had turned around after the disengagement and said "ooh boy Israel you're in for it now we're going to develop the hell out of this economy and turn it into a goddam Singapore and we're going to pour all of our resources into a peaceful political pressure campaign to get more concessions from you at the negotiating table" I think that would be a very different story! Then it would have been a rousing success.
IDF pulls out of Gaza in September 2005. In November 2005, Israel signs an agreement with the PA to give the Palestinians control of the Rafah crossing, permit them to build a seaport, and negotiate the reopening of the airport. In January 2006, Hamas win the election. Very easy to imagine that if Fatah wins the election or if Hamas accepts Israel’s existence and commits to the peace process then Gaza does have free movement of goods and population and an airport. You can’t vow a jihad against the country that surrounds 90% of your territory and then complain that they hindered your freedom of movement in response.
Disagree. To beat the analogy to death: you give the guy 5k, he knows he's not getting the rest back because yourey spending it all right in front of you (settlement expansion), then he buys a gun.
Not at the time - again, that would have been a bizarre inference to make. Sharon - one of the ur-settlement guys - pulls out all of the settlments from Gaza, pulls out of some isolated settlements in the West Bank, and - according to his deputy and successor - was planning further withdrawals. He also built a security fence that included the consolidated Israeli settements close to the border. He promises no new settlement expansion outside of the settlement blocs everyone knows Israel will retain in any peace agreement. He blows up his own party to do this, and after he has a debilitating stroke, his successor continues making peace offers for an independent state. You can debate how sincere any of this was but compared to any other point in Israeli history it would be bizarre to interpret this as Sharon “spending it all right in front of you.”
To expand a bit, I think Israelis need to understand that there is no magic wand solution to their problems with the Palestinians. They can openly pursue indefinite occupation and settlement and probably get away with it if they are willing to take drastic cuts to their standard of living. Or they can do what Sharon did (and Netanyahu continued) and try to have the most occupation with the least costs. Or they can invest real effort into pursuing regional peace, not because Arabs aren't shitheads, but because that still is the only real solution. Or they can just flame out in a blaze of infamy, which is what half the population wants to do.
My two cents is it would be a lot easier for them to manage the occupation if they committed to (i) ending the occupation once suitable security arrangements could be achieved and (ii) refusing to allow any new settlement construction.
Even if (i) never happens you're at least demonstrating that you're the good guy and that you don't have any ulterior motive in delaying the end of the occupation.
But obviously nobody buys the security arguments if (i) you proudly say there will never be an end to the occupation and (ii) keep trying to take more land.
"The best libels are built from pieces of reality. Something actually happened. Someone really died. The propagandist takes those fragments, assigns them a meaning they cannot support, recruits powerful authorities to validate that meaning, and adds enough emotional horror to make the target morally repulsive. This is how hatred learns to call itself moral clarity." See: https://matthewfeinberg.substack.com/p/stalins-doctors-plot
I will believe in two-state solution Naftali Bennett when I see it lmao
I don't think you're going to be able to get that 30% of Americans who've changed their perception of Israel back. As a former strong supporter of Israel, I can say that my opinion had been slipping for years.
But the last few years of war crimes, gaslighting, and a middle finger to everyone on Earth who objects isn't something we're likely to forget anytime soon.
And I firmly believe that sentiment is going to partially shape American politics over the next two decades at least.
There’s American popular opinion and then there’s the actual voters and electorates who actively influence policy. I’m not talking AIPAC or even American Jews, the big decider will be the trends in the Evangelical world. CUFI has more members than there are Jews on Earth. The Evangelical vote numbers in the tens of millions.
The average Palestinian supporter is kind of a cause du jour type and will move on with the news cycle.
Jews don’t have the demographics to shape how policy will change and AIPAC is a bunch of pussies. Where America goes with regards to Israel depends on the view of the Evangelicals, which could change.
Eli, I think you’ve identified the distinction that matters. The goal isn’t to persuade Mehdi Hasan. It’s to make Mehdi Hasan less persuasive to everyone else.
I’d add only this: removing Ben-Gvir and Smotrich cuts off an enormous supply of ammunition, but it won’t by itself recover the Americans Israel has lost. Some of that newer 30% are reacting not to anti-Zionist ideology but to what they have seen in Gaza and the West Bank. A new government will need to offer something affirmative as well: confront settler violence, restrain settlement expansion, and make clear that Jewish self-determination and Palestinian political dignity are not mutually exclusive.
That may never change Mehdi Hasan’s mind. But as you say, he was never the audience.
Regardless of who wins the next election in Israel, it will still remain a fact that the US was suckered by Israel into launching a disastrous war against Iran. This will be viewed by Americans as a huge betrayal of trust, probably for decades. I can’t think of any comparable incident in our 250 year history.
Jim, I think this gives Netanyahu too much agency and the United States too little. Netanyahu certainly urged action against Iran, and we can argue about whether that influence was wise or destructive. But “Israel suckered us” is a much stronger claim.
The United States has its own intelligence services, military leadership, national security apparatus, and an elected president who ultimately made the decision. If Trump made a disastrous choice after listening to Netanyahu, responsibility for that choice still belongs to Trump and the American government.
I’m perfectly willing to hold Netanyahu responsible for Netanyahu’s policies. But I don’t think we should make Israel responsible for ours.
I don’t really disagree with you, but for me it makes sense to frame the issue in the context of US politics. Since Obama negotiated the JCPOA, Israel has decisively allied with Republicans and made Democrats their enemy. They’ve also waged a long campaign of trying to pull the US into maximal conflict with Iran, with the ultimate goal of having us join them in a major war. They finally succeeded on Feb 28. It would be insane at this point for Democrats to not see them as their enemy. I agree that Trump has ultimate responsibility, but that’s not inconsistent since I also view him as an enemy of both US and Democratic interests.
By the way Jim, I am a Zionist and I have never voted for a Republican in my life.
I’ve voted Democratic and been pretty pro-Israel all my life. During the latest war, however, we saw an Israeli govt that was constantly urging escalation, willing to blow up the world economy and destroy the gulf states (oil infrastructure, desalinization) in their Ahab-like quest to topple the Iranian regime. It was Trump who wouldn’t go there and backed down. The current Israeli govt has clearly become a menace.
Jim, I think there’s an important distinction in what you just wrote: “the current Israeli government.” That is different from Israel.
I’ve been sharply critical of this government myself. But one of the arguments I made recently in The Phantom Door was that we should be careful not to mistake the present for the permanent. Governments change. Coalitions change. Democracies sometimes correct themselves, and sometimes fail to.
There’s a remarkable coincidence coming this fall. Israel votes on October 27; Americans vote one week later. I have a stake in both outcomes, although only a vote in one.
So I’m quite willing to judge the actions of Netanyahu and his government. I’m much more reluctant to turn that judgment into one about Israel itself. In both countries, I’d rather leave the voters the dignity—and responsibility—of writing the next chapter.
The fact remains that without Netenyahu’s urging, it never would have happened. It’s our fault we elected a dope as president, but Netenyahu took advantage of us and we can blame him for that.
"A betrayal of trust" is , I believe, a misreading and/or poorly worded interpretation of what actually happened - unless you mean that Trump trusted/believed in Netanyahu's prediction of what the attacks against Iran would bring about.
I don't think Netyanyahu tricked Trump into doing something that would "only" benefit Israel while leaving the U.S. "holding the bag." He apparently really (and stupidly) believed the attacks might have actually led to an uprising of the Iranian people and a actual destruction of Iran's nuclear program - results that would have benefited both the U.S. and Israel.
As much as I despise both Netanyahu and Trump, I would have been very happy if the attacks had achieved both of those goals. Tragically, those goals now appear to be even more distant than they were before the war began,
Eisenkot’s formula of “called for separation from the Palestinians through a gradual, supervised process with permanent Israeli security responsibility” sounds like it could be a winner to let people know that Israel has no designs on oppressing Palestinians but also without demanding the withdrawal of ~100k civilians from deeper in Judea and Samaria all at once and without causing a security vacuum by the withdrawal of the IDF
Mehdi Hasan and other antizionists don’t require feeding. Their supply is the delegitimization campaign and the production of libels.
My problem with the current government was encapsulated in the last paragraph of your essay. The settler movement and settler violence is part of an effort to make the West Bank fully Israeli, with isolated pockets of Palestinians. For the last 25 years, the Israelis should have been working to make the West Bank a successful enclave (especially in comparison to Hamas run Gaza) so that Palestinians can focus on their own land and economy and less on Israel. Everything isn't zero sum but it does get treated that way.
If Hasan's lips are moving, he's lying.
I suppose it's not terribly appropriate - or even relevant - to comment on someone's personality, but I literally can't think of anyone who is more over- the- top pompous than Mehdi Hassan. He is so in love with the sound of his own voice!
Am I correct that the Israeli Arab parties have never been part of a majority coalition government.
For an outsider like me, what’s the best way to understand the reasons why the Arab parties never join?
I second Rewrnzo’s response and would add that the Arab parties are a complex bunch.
First, for the longest time they did not want to sit in coalition; they tend to be much more comfortable in opposition and being anti-government no matter who is in governments, so the phenomenon is bidirectional.
Second, throughout the years some of them identified as anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or openly supported Hamas or the PFLP to the extent the law would allow them, which made them radioactive for coalition.
Third, they tend to represent 7-10% of seats in the Knesset despite Arabs representing 20% of the Israeli electorate, making them less representative of Israeli Arabs than one might think. Arab society in Israel is not a monolith and many Arabs in Israel don’t feel represented by the Arab parties (I’d offer Lourd Atia as a young Arab Israeli who was recently thrusted into advocacy when she had an on-air argument with Ayman Oudeh on the lack of representation of the Arab community in Israel by the Arab parties as a recent high profile example).
Thanks
Technically, Ra'am was a member of the coalition government from 2021-2022 when Bennett and Lapid were PM. Mansour Abbas was a minister without portfolio.
Thanks
Jews and our allies also just desperately want an Israeli government that we don’t have to be actively ashamed of.
"The Israeli electorate remains deeply traumatized by October 7, and that is the part Favreau doesn’t grasp. Israelis withdrew from Gaza, understood it as a gesture toward peace, and got October 7."
Part of the solution is demonstrating to Israelis that the Gaza withdrawal was not a gesture towards peace, but an attempt to buy time with the international community (which worked) while decreasing the costs of the occupation (which also somewhat worked).
I don’t think the subjective intent really matters. What still happened is that Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas took over, declared neverending war, the Israelis then instituted an extremely unpopular blockade (vis a vis global opinion), several minor wars, and then October 7 and the subsequent war, which has also been a catastrophe for Israel’s position, from either the right or left perspective. Intent aside it’s powerful evidence that increased autonomy - whatever the intent - leads to both a worse security and worse global PR situation. You can convince people that next time will be different or it’s worth the risk or whatever but that’s where the persuasion has to happen. “Actually you guys only withdrew for cynical reasons to buy time for some other nefarious Zionist plot” is not just insulting it’s non-responsive.
I agree that the Gaza withdrawal shows that increasing autonomy, at least past a certain point, for Palestinians is a bad idea, at least without a genuine partner for peace, but that is the *left wing* position in Israel. The right-wing position is that it shows that Palestinians are uniquely evil, driven purely by antisemitism and must be relentlessly beaten down, or preferably expelled or [wink, wink].
Regarding the motives question, look at like this. Say that there was someone who insisted that you owed him $100,000, and you gave him $5,000 and told him that you were done and didn't want to hear from him again. If he keeps pursuing you and even becomes more hostile, is this evidence that he is just implacably hostile, that the $100,000 is just a pretext and that it's pointless to negotiation with him? Maybe, but I think it's fairly weak evidence. I personally oppose a 2SS because I do believe the maximum we can give is less than the minimum they will accept, but the Gaza withdrawal doesn't provide much evidence for this.
The idea that the Gaza withdrawal shows that all negotiation is pointless is a Right-Wing Israeli argument made by people who (a) oppose negotiation regardless and (b) never actually bothered to understand the rationale of the Gaza withdrawal. Their answer to how Israel was going to continue the occupation of Gaza as the population ballooned to 2 million is no answer because either they are just dumb and don't understand anything or their real answer is genocide. It is popular in Israel more generally, because Israelis are insular, are highly susceptible to flattery, and are really not exposed to a lot of factual information about the history of the conflict. If they were exposed to more information I think they would have less dumb opinions.
To sum up. Clearly the Gaza withdrawal was a failed strategy, but Israelis should understand what it failed at, rather than hallucinating that it failed at some totally other thing that just so happens to make them look uniquely virtuous and their enemies look uniquely vicious. You can try selling that story to the goyim (though it doesn't seem like there's much of a market for it), but don't get high on your own supply.
One problem with your $5,000 analogy is nobody told the Palestinians "Gaza is all you're going to get, now we're square" and that would have been a bizarre inference to make. Certainly this was not how any actors at the time understood it - Sharon had to start a whole new party of the Likud's left faction and Labor's right faction just because his own refused to go along with it. The right wing parties hated it and opposed it bitterly and all of the left wing parties signed up for it. Because everyone understood that if the Gaza withdrawal worked out well it would open the door for further withdrawals.
But the real problem with the analogy is not just that the guy I gave the $5,000 to simply continued to pursue me for the debt - he used the $5,000 to buy a gun and then tried to kill me with it.
Whether or not I should understand this as evidence of this man's implacable hatred for me is one thing (although I think it's pretty clear evidence he's unhinged) but it's certainly strong evidence for the proposition that he'll use any resources I give him to try and kill me, which is a powerful disincentive for me to bargain.
If Hamas had turned around after the disengagement and said "ooh boy Israel you're in for it now we're going to develop the hell out of this economy and turn it into a goddam Singapore and we're going to pour all of our resources into a peaceful political pressure campaign to get more concessions from you at the negotiating table" I think that would be a very different story! Then it would have been a rousing success.
Also, building a Singapore requires free transit of goods and population, an airport etc. non of which Gaza was allowed
IDF pulls out of Gaza in September 2005. In November 2005, Israel signs an agreement with the PA to give the Palestinians control of the Rafah crossing, permit them to build a seaport, and negotiate the reopening of the airport. In January 2006, Hamas win the election. Very easy to imagine that if Fatah wins the election or if Hamas accepts Israel’s existence and commits to the peace process then Gaza does have free movement of goods and population and an airport. You can’t vow a jihad against the country that surrounds 90% of your territory and then complain that they hindered your freedom of movement in response.
We don't need to hypothesize about a fatah controlled enclave - it hasn't exactly worked out well for Palestinians in the west bank has it?
Restrictions on the flow of goods and population were in place on day 0 of the 'withdrawal', the occupation never ended.
Disagree. To beat the analogy to death: you give the guy 5k, he knows he's not getting the rest back because yourey spending it all right in front of you (settlement expansion), then he buys a gun.
Not at the time - again, that would have been a bizarre inference to make. Sharon - one of the ur-settlement guys - pulls out all of the settlments from Gaza, pulls out of some isolated settlements in the West Bank, and - according to his deputy and successor - was planning further withdrawals. He also built a security fence that included the consolidated Israeli settements close to the border. He promises no new settlement expansion outside of the settlement blocs everyone knows Israel will retain in any peace agreement. He blows up his own party to do this, and after he has a debilitating stroke, his successor continues making peace offers for an independent state. You can debate how sincere any of this was but compared to any other point in Israeli history it would be bizarre to interpret this as Sharon “spending it all right in front of you.”
To expand a bit, I think Israelis need to understand that there is no magic wand solution to their problems with the Palestinians. They can openly pursue indefinite occupation and settlement and probably get away with it if they are willing to take drastic cuts to their standard of living. Or they can do what Sharon did (and Netanyahu continued) and try to have the most occupation with the least costs. Or they can invest real effort into pursuing regional peace, not because Arabs aren't shitheads, but because that still is the only real solution. Or they can just flame out in a blaze of infamy, which is what half the population wants to do.
My two cents is it would be a lot easier for them to manage the occupation if they committed to (i) ending the occupation once suitable security arrangements could be achieved and (ii) refusing to allow any new settlement construction.
Even if (i) never happens you're at least demonstrating that you're the good guy and that you don't have any ulterior motive in delaying the end of the occupation.
But obviously nobody buys the security arguments if (i) you proudly say there will never be an end to the occupation and (ii) keep trying to take more land.
"The best libels are built from pieces of reality. Something actually happened. Someone really died. The propagandist takes those fragments, assigns them a meaning they cannot support, recruits powerful authorities to validate that meaning, and adds enough emotional horror to make the target morally repulsive. This is how hatred learns to call itself moral clarity." See: https://matthewfeinberg.substack.com/p/stalins-doctors-plot