I’m not going to really comment too much on the political or moral aspects of this, because I don’t really have much original to say.  For the record, my opinion lies somewhere between Jon Chait and Andrew Sullivan.

The thing I will say is that there seems to be a market for a non-lethal, non-destructive ship disabling weapon.  Now I’m not a naval weapons expert or anything, but it seems like this would be possible from an engineering perspective.  I’m thinking of some sort of guided, heavy, non-explosive torpedo to effectively “knock off” the propeller without actually sinking the ship.

It seems like such a weapon would have saved some lives in this situation.

I was saying to a co-worker a couple months ago, during the most recent round of violence in Gaza, that the Palestinians needed some sort of Muslim Gandhi; someone to lead a non-violent opposition to Israeli occupation.

Could the latest events in Iran spark a non-violent Palestinian movement?  It’s impossible to tell at this point, and I think it will depend a large part on the success of the current “Green” movement in Iran.

A reader writes to Sullivan with similar thoughts:

I had a conversation at lunch yesterday with a friend, a neocon Jewish American, that fascinated me.  We were getting ready to get up from the table when he said, “Hey, wait a minute, do you want to talk politics for a minute?”  We proceeded to discuss the events in Iran and at one point I brought up my amazement at the protesters’ embrace of non-violence and their courage in the face of aggression.  I said, “I wonder if this will be a lesson to the Palestinians.  That perhaps if they renounce violence and embrace peaceful resistance they too could garner more international support for their cause, a la Gandhi.”  His reaction fascinated me.  He got this very serious, dour look on his face and replied, “That’s what worries me.  The biggest existential threat to Israel is that the Palestinians will realize the potential for non-violence and embrace it.”

I finally understood why some of the more cynical neocons cannot stand the Green Revolution.  Without a conflict, without a bogey man to demonize, they are scared to death.  In their minds their legitimacy comes from the fact that they are better than the bogey man, that they are necessary to keep the bogey man at bay.  I don’t think that the nation of Israel is so fragile that it could not come to terms with a peaceful movement for Palestinian statehood.

As soon as the Palestinians realize the power of a non-violent approach, the two-state solution will materialize in a flash.

Here I thought things couldn’t get any worse in Israel:

Winter arrived in Israel, literally and politically, on Tuesday. After months of a warm and rainless false spring, the tempests finally arrived on Election Day, as if an overly romantic cinematographer had waited for wild gusts and thunder before lining up the extras at the polling places and letting the cameras roll. [...]

The worst news, however, is that ultra-rightist Avigdor Lieberman and his Israel Is Our Home party have won 15 Knesset seats. Lieberman is a blustering, bellicose figure in the mold of the European radical right. His platform focuses on disenfranchising Israel’s Arab citizens, whom he decries as a fifth column. Lieberman’s ascendancy threatens to transform the external Israeli-Arab conflict into an internal ethnic struggle between the Jewish majority and Arab minority. [...]

A central plank of Lieberman’s platform is conditioning full citizenship on an oath of loyalty to the state, the flag, and the national anthem. Since Arab citizens are unhappy with the flag, featuring a Jewish star, and with the anthem, which speaks of the “Jewish soul,” the obvious goal is to make them decline the oath and lose the right to vote. Lieberman also rails against weak government. His party has proposed a “reform” that would allow the prime minister to appoint Cabinet members without parliamentary approval. During a state of emergency, the Cabinet or even the prime minister alone would be able to enact regulations superseding laws. It’s a blueprint for one-man rule.

Lieberman’s foreign policy is equally strident. In an interview with me in 2006, he described Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians as being one front in the conflict of civilizations. Against Iran, he said, neither diplomacy nor nuclear deterrence would work. “Anyone who draws the lessons from Hitler’s rise [knows Hitler] was telling the truth, and Ahmadinejad is telling the truth,” he said, referring to the Iranian president’s threats against Israel. “All attempts to pacify Hitler ended in World War II, and all attempts to appease Ahmadinejad are doomed to failure.” The unstated implication was that Israel will need to resort to force to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Given his party’s strength, Lieberman will demand a senior position in the Cabinet regardless of who becomes prime minister. Wherever one imagines him — as defense minister controlling day-to-day policy in the occupied territories, as finance minister cutting funds for Arab communities, as housing minister able to increase construction in settlements — the vision is frightening. Whatever position he receives, his party’s contingent in the Cabinet will press for hard-line policies. By competing for Lieberman’s support in their fight with each other, Livni and Netanyahu put their desire to win over their country’s future. In the aftermath of the election, it seems that the storm has only begun.

A racist in the cabinet.  That’ll probably work out well…

(BTW, what’s with all these dicks named Lieberman?  Anybody know any decent guys out there named Lieberman?  I’d hate to start a stereotype, but…)

Yglesias advocates a more blunt approach to the settlement problem:

To be maximally effective, I think the United States need to commit itself publicly to this goal as well as raising it privately. Israelis need to understand that their leaders are under pressure from their country’s most important ally and that ordinary Israelis need to choose between the settlers and the United States. Second, a big part of why the U.S. needs to be involved in Israel-Palestine issues is the role the conflict plays in driving perceptions of America in large swathes of the world. So to get the maximum effect out of a serious drive for a freeze on new construction within settlements, we need to be seen as exercising pressure not just pleading behind-the-scenes.

Practical politics, I understand, pushes in the other direction. Lots of Americans who have no particular brief for the settlers are nevertheless very touchy about Israel being subjected to any kind of strong criticism and are very wedded to a narrative in which the failure of Oslo rests 100 percent with the Palestinians. Under the circumstances, speaking bluntly about the settlements is politically risky. But it’s much more likely to work, and much more likely to advance American interests.

This whole settler thing just drives me nuts, because it’s usually the part of the negotiations that completely breaks down.  I just don’t understand how anyone could think that these settlers should not only be allowed to stay where they are, but actually expand what they already have.

This is pretty clear cut to me.  Eventually, we’ll make two states.  One part will be Israel, the other(s) will be Palestine.  If you want to be an Israeli citizen, make sure you live in Israel.  If it were me, I’d do it sooner rather than later, not build new homes in a place that will never be Israel.

This needs to stop.  Is it really incovenient and destabilizing for tens of thousands of families?  Absolutely.  But a continuing conflict that erupts into open war every 2 years is pretty destabilizing for hundreds of thousands of people in the region.

No way.  No how.  No settlements.