Defund Likud
By 
It’s not exactly news that the right-wing coalition that governs Israel has long since abandoned any pretense to supporting any meaningful form of Palestinian statehood. But his Prime Ministership under fire domestically after the massive incompetence revealed by the 10/7 attacks, and internationally given the incredibly disproportionate and indiscriminate response to these attacks, Netanyahu is putting his opposition in unavoidably stark terms:
In the face of increasing pressure from the United States, Britain and Germany, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his opposition to what these allies see as the future of Gaza: an interim government overseen by the Palestinian Authority and an eventual Palestinian state existing alongside Israel.
Speaking only hours after the army admitted to shooting three Israeli hostages as they held up a white flag in Gaza, fueling consternation and anger among Israelis, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to be trying to change the subject, boasting that he had prevented the creation of a Palestinian state in the past and would continue to do so.
“I’m proud that I prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state because today everybody understands what that Palestine state could have been,” he said at a news conference Saturday night. “Now that we’ve seen the little Palestinian state in Gaza, everyone understands what would have happened if we had capitulated to international pressures and enabled a state like that” on the West Bank.
Mr. Netanyahu is hoping to hold on to power after the war, despite popular fury that Hamas built itself into a military power and invaded Israel on his watch. To do that, he is trying to appeal to Israelis, including his Likud party and its far-right coalition partners, who mistrust the Palestinians now more than ever and argue that a two-state solution is a dangerous fantasy.
Fortunately, the status quo of permanent occupation and subjection has eliminated any security threat to Israeli civilians and…I’ll come in again.
I think it’s naive to think that cutting off American funding to Israel would materially improve the chances of Palestinian statehood, and it’s true that some people on the nominal left searching for any excuse to cheer for fascism over liberalism in 2024 are acting like Biden is personally in charge of the IDF. But the funding should be cut off anyway — moral complicity is bad enough whatever the causal relationship, and there are countless better things we could be doing with the money. And I do think the prospects of this happening in at least the medium term have been increased both by Netanyahu’s response to 10/7 and by his not merely admitting the long-obvious but using his explicit opposition to any form of Palestinian statehood ever as a primary political selling point.