A Discussion: JEFFREY GOLDBERG and PETER BEINART [The Atlantic] – Jeffrey Goldberg: You write about the shift away from Israel by young American Jewish liberals, and you attribute their discomfort with Israel to unhappiness about settlements, the occupation and their perception that Israel does not want to make peace with the Palestinians, or grant them dignity. I, too, sense this discomfort, but with a caveat: I’m not sure they are completely, empirically right. Which is to say: Settlements are wrong, and various Israeli policies are discriminatory, but aren’t liberal-minded American Jews being naive when they think that the Palestinians are blameless in this morass? Why should their Israeli cousins believe in the possibility of peace, after the debacle at Camp David in 2000, and after the Gaza settlement withdrawal was met not by the rise of moderation on the Palestinian side, but by the rise of Hamas?

Peter Beinart: I never said the Palestinians were blameless. They’re obviously not. But Abbas and Fayyad (especially the latter) are the Palestinian leaders most reconciled to Israeli statehood we’ve ever had. Yes, they’re weak, but has Israel done all it could to strengthen them–to show that it’s possible to halt settlement growth without an intifada? Hamas killed a friend of mine, so i’m not a fan. But Israel decided to let it run in the election, and I think after it won the best response would have to been to support a Palestinian unity government, perhaps with the proviso that we deal with the non-Hamas ministers, as we do with the government in Lebanon in Hezbollah. Instead we stupidly pushed Fatah to try to take power violently in Gaza, which backfired because they lost the contest of arms (and made us look incredibly hypocritical after Bush’s democracy rhetoric). I’d have insisted that Hamas stop rocket fire but allowed them to fudge recognition of Israel for now and not to demand they abide by past peace agreements (that was the stupidest condition, I think, because various Israeli governments have failed it). Yes, Hamas’ victory was tragic, but I don’t think it was inevitable that we had to get to where we were in December 2008. I understand that wars like the one in Gaza always inflict a terrible human toll, but it’s important that you’ve exhausted other options first, and I don’t think the US, or Israel, did.

Continued at The Atlantic | More Chronicle & Notices.