Subject: Re: Thank you Lord
Is that attitude a cause, or an effect, of over 25 years of Likud domination of the government?

Probably more a cause than an effect, though I'm not sure it's really either.

I have a number of cousins in Israel, most of whom are fairly liberal politically and used to be in favor of a two-state solution. But not any more - they've all moved very hard on that. Not because of Likud, but just because of the experience of the last twenty years or so. Both in the region, and in the West.

Generally, they don't believe that creating a Palestinian state would change the dynamic. Previously, they believed that if there was a Palestinian state, the fighting would stop. Now, they're all convinced that the very most likely outcome would be that Hamas would govern the new Palestinian state (note - they were convinced of that before the October 7th attacks, and now they're even more convinced). Hamas would either win the first election, or they'd just seize power after the first election. Either way, Palestine would be governed by Hamas.

And in that scenario, Hamas just keeps fighting to destroy Israel. But now they're a state, so they can have an actual army - tanks and planes and missiles and everything. That would pose such a massive threat to Israel's security that they'd have to end up seizing security governance again - either in response to the first invasion from the new state, or pre-emptively.

You end up exactly where we are now - except Hamas has had some amount of time free of sanctions and import restrictions to become even more deadly, and now has the additional benefits of statehood. The exact same dynamic, but with a deadlier enemy, and no one has benefited - except Hamas.

The other thing that drives that pessimism is the rise in the belief among progressives and liberals in the West that Israel is illegitimate. They've always believed that Hamas rejected the idea of a two-state solution, and would only be happy with a one-state solution (with them in charge). But in the last decade they've become convinced that most global progressives/liberals believe the same thing. They don't trust that a two-state solution would be defended internationally when Hamas starts attacking again.

So....they've given up on supporting a second state. The status quo is terrible, but moving to a two-state situation would be vastly worse for them, in their opinion.