Back from 85° in Costa Rica to another snow storm in the Northeast. A few things happened while Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right were away. One wasn’t a surprise: Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud Party again claimed the most seats in the Knesset. It’s hard for Americans to wrap their minds around the fact that 75% of Israeli voters can be against a guy, and yet, in a parliamentary system he’s still the Prime Minister.
Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute declaration that there will be no Palestinian state finally rips the fig leaf off of the failed peace process. No one will try to keep up that facade any longer. He claimed subsequently that he never really meant it, but when pressed by a close election, out came the old big bad idea, just like a Costa Rican Black Iguana:
We need to add some distance between the US and Israel, particularly in light of Netanyahu’s move to invalidate the two-state solution. The Obama administration could agree to passage of a UN Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution, something we have always opposed. To really pay-back Bibi for grandstanding in DC and meddling in the P5+1 nuclear negotiations, we should base the two-state solution on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to the major Jewish settlements built by Bibi in the West Bank.
Perhaps it is a good thing that Bibi won the election. It’s time to give him a dose of reality. Yeah, it’s time to call bullshit on Bibi. Now a few cartoons.
Bibi isolates Israel:
Bibi’s domestic campaign message was a cheap imitation:
Obama goes to the experts for advice on undermining a leader:
Obama suggests voting be mandatory. Reaction is predictable:
Republicans try to find the losers in their bracket. Please help them out:
Bibi is like one of those real estate moguls in NYC who own slums and keep doing their best to avoid repairing them. Like them, all is a lie. Of note, the political right has crafted a story that has: 1) Iraq was “won” after the surge and Obama threw victory away, and 2) Iran is our biggest threat in the middle east. Actually the US has no big threat in the middle east – if we walked away, our national security might be no worse than if we keep pouring more gasoline on the fire. For Israel, yes, Iran may be a threat, but even for Israel, it is the Saudis who have built the extremist infrastructure that inflames the young.