In the long run, a deep American alliance with the kind of garrison state Netanyahu envisions will become untenable. The only remaining diplomatic strategy will be to deepen Israel’s ties with right-wing America, whose support for Israel is not contingent upon it fulfilling its liberal, democratic ideals.First of all, I think Netanyahu believes that "right-wing America" will be indistinguishable from the U.S. government in a couple of years. In the interim, I assume Republicans are going to work on turning support for a two-state solution into a radical, beyond-the-pale, outside-the-Overton-window idea in America, never mind the fact that it was an idea endorsed by the last Republican president. I think the default position for Republican presidential candidates and Republicans in Congress will be opposition to the idea of Palestinian statehood. That will put pressure on Hillary Clinton to fall in line.
Chait thinks that, "in the long run," Netanyahuism "will become untenable." Why? Because of foreign pressure on Israel? When has America ever responded to that? Because U.S. public opinion will evolve with regard to Israel? Sure, in decades -- maybe. A Pew poll conducted last summer did show an age split on attitudes about blame in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. But the split was between very young people and everyone else:
While all age groups north of 30 years old clearly blame Hamas more than Israel for the current violence, young adults buck the trend in a big way. Among 18 to 29-year olds, 29 percent blame Israel more for the current wave of violence, while 21 percent blame Hamas.In the Pew poll, people 65 and older blamed Hamas rather than Israel by a decisive 53%-15% margin; for 50-to-64-year-olds, the pro-Israel margin was 47%-14%; for 30-to-49-year-olds, it was 37%-20%. There were similar results in a Gallup poll taken at the same time.
But in a Gallup poll on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict taken last month, there wasn't even a significant age gap in respondent preferences. The one significant finding was that older people are becoming even more pro-Israel:
The use of the phrase "apartheid state" to refer to Israel encourages some people to think the endgame will inevitably be like South Africa's -- ever-increasing isolation followed by change. But the Holocaust and anti-Semitic forces in the contemporary world mean that many Americans will never reject Israel's policies the way America eventually rejected South Africa's. So Netanyahu's vision is tenable, alas.
