Subject: Re: Israel/Palestine
I would be interested in your perspective on Oliver's commentary. His pieces are well-researched, and he often credits actual journalists as the sources for his pieces. He didn't exactly say "thiiiis close", but he did say they were well on the way to something both could agree to (paraphrasing from memory).

Oliver's commentary is always sharp....but in this case, it's ahistorical.

Today, the biggest obstacle to a two-state solution is spatial. It's geographic. It's Israel's continued expansion of settlements into the West Bank. It's what everyone is focused on - in part because it's really obvious on the ground, and in part because it's something that has a clear moral answer. Israel should not be expanding its settlements, shouldn't have been expanding their settlements, and needs to stop. And that doesn't require Israel giving up on anything other than the crazy Manifest Destiny-type ideas of the right-wing religious zealots.

So if you look back at 2000 from that frame - the current frame - then 2000 seems like a lost opportunity. The offers on the table regarding borders look more reasonable, and the easiest to resolve. After all, the Palestinians were being offer far more of the West Bank than seems remotely possible today, and since land swaps were being discussed anyway, you could have reached an accommodation on borders.

But that's an inaccurate frame. Because while the 2000 peace talks might have presented a chance to agree on borders, it utterly failed to make any progress on other core Palestinian demands - especially on the right of return and Israel's right to maintain military installations in Palestinian areas (much like the U.S. has military bases in other countries). Both of those were a major sticking points in Oslo, and remained sticking points in Camp David. And the sides never got anywhere close to fixing that, or even coming up with a way of fixing that.

That's why it's ahistorical. Today, no one talks about the right of return much, because the issue of the day is settlements. So it seems to us that an agreement that was close to resolving the issue of settlements is an agreement that was close to solving the overall conflict. But it wasn't.