The late Ariel Sharon, a longtime Israeli soldier and political leader, confided his thoughts to his close friend Uri Dan, an Israeli journalist. Their beliefs can be found in This Burning Land, by Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin.

“The bond between the two men was built on an unshakable belief. The Jews and the Arabs had been fighting for generations, and… no resolution was on the horizon,” reads This Burning Land.

As Sharon and Dan saw it, “the Arabs had never genuinely accepted the presence of Israel,” and so a two-state solution was not possible nor even desirable. They “accepted the conflict as a permanent feature of life in the Middle East, part of the world they were born into, and part of the world they would leave behind… In their minds—and in the minds of a fair number of Israelis and Palestinians—if you did not accept the enduring nature of the conflict, then you did not understand the conflict at all.”

The 2010 book did not state the views of Benjamin Netanyahu, who at that time was beginning a long run as prime minister. But the idea of a long-lasting conflict helps to make sense of Netanyahu’s interview Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as several past conversations.

  • @givesomefucksEnglish
    19•1 year ago

    You should read it all, but:

    So Israel wants the freedom to strike targets in Gaza when it chooses, but does not want the responsibility of governing or providing services to 2.3 million people, and also is not ready to say who should take that responsibility. In rejecting the Palestinian Authority, Israel is rejecting a group that has endorsed a two-state solution—which the U.S. and others see as the only way toward permanent peace.

    Netanyahu says Gaza needs a new ‘civilian government,’ but won’t say who For those who think that Mideast peace is the goal, this is a significant omission. But for anyone who thinks the conflict is “permanent” and that no solution could possibly be satisfactory to Israel, the lack of a long-term plan for Gaza is desirable. It’s the point.

    In numerous interviews with me dating back to 2013, Netanyahu has only rarely indicated openness to a two-state solution, and not at all in recent years. He’s told me instead of an idea to allow Palestinians to govern themselves only on matters of no interest to Israel, while Israelis keep all power over security matters.

    In a 2022 interview, Netanyahu admitted he was offering Palestinians something far short of political equality. “I don’t hide that for a minute. I say it openly,” he said. Palestinians are just as open that they aren’t interested.

    His solution is to have absolute authority and zero responsibility.

    For millions of people to live in terrible conditions because he just flat out doesn’t recognize that a human is a human.