AMERICAN PURPOSE
The Peace Illusion
by Michael Mandelbaum
November 20, 2020

…The Biden Administration would be well advised, however, not to resume one particular feature of pre-Trump American foreign policy: the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. For three decades, successive American presidents invested diplomatic capital and their own time in that process. Then-Vice President Biden assisted President Obama in attempting to bring about a settlement of the now century-long conflict through the establishment of a Palestinian state that would exist peacefully next to Israel. The effort failed in the past and is doomed to fail in the future as well, for a central but little-recognized reason: the Palestinians do not want such a state. Their overriding goal is the destruction of Israel and they will enter into no arrangements that require their acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East as permanent and legitimate. READ MORE