Nathan Thrall, at the Jerusalem Hotel, May 24, 2017. Photo by Phil Weiss
Liberal Zionists wince when they see Nathan Thrall’s byline. So do the professional Peace Processors, those U.S. diplomats who have made long careers by predicting that coddling Israel’s government could produce a comprehensive peace agreement.
What must especially alarm both liberal Zionists and Peace Processors is that Thrall is not safely quarantined in the alternative media world, but he breaks into more mainstream outlets from time to time, even including the
New York Times. Just last month, he appeared in the
London Review of Books, characterizing Israel as an “apartheid state” just before the B’Tselem report came out with the same conclusion. That piece made liberal Zionists squirm by attacking their claim that Israel and the West Bank are “separate regimes,” and “Israel” is still a democracy.
The One-State Reality and the Plight of the Palestinians
Israel has been praised as a pace-setter in administering the vaccine, but it has not been vaccinating all the population under its control only the dominant ethnic/religious group, including West Bank settlers, while Palestinian Arabs have had to watch and wait.
In its first statement to the United Nations Security Council about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Biden administration declared its support for “a mutually agreed two-state solution, one in which Israel lives in peace and security alongside a viable Palestinian state.” This unsurprising position marks a departure from the Trump administration’s swatting aside of the Palestinians and promotion of a one-sided proposal in which the only mutual agreement was between that administration and the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The one practical difference that the new administration’s posture will make is a restoration of diplomatic co