From "Tough Love" All The Way To "Crunch Time"

These liberals can get very violent, verbally at least.

Roger Cohen goes: Crunch Time

Yes, he's back, physically. After his daughter's Bat Mitzva in the summer, he's back in Jerusalem.

In December 2008, he was fomenting "tough love".

Another time, he referred to Benjamin Netanyahu is terms of "dangerous, mythologizing attempts" in relation to Iran's bomb!

Cohen, of course, is the dangerous one in this matrix.

And now this:

...What is it that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to do that he never dreamed of doing? He recently got to “two states for two peoples,” but that was just playing catch-up...

The Palestinians have stated their position: The 1967 borders plus or minus agreed land swaps, meaning a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, President Mahmoud Abbas has said, Palestinians will drop all “historical claims” and live alongside a secure Israel in peace.

I am not convinced of that finality supposition of Cohen. And I have given examples but more importantly, is the PA education and sensitizing its populace to that goal or it it a few spokespersons mouthing for the media?

Cohen admits:

Netanyahu and Israelis have plenty of cause for skepticism, not least the Fatah-Hamas division in the Palestinian national movement and the way withdrawal from Gaza led to rockets from Hamas.

His new line of pressure is:

...Obama has to look over the horizon and ask Netanyahu this question:

“Mr. Prime Minister, I understand your security concerns. The United States will always stand by Israel. But tell me this: If all your security concerns are met, all of them, what is the border you want for Israel?”

And he suggests:

The only possible Palestinian flexibility on the settlement-building moratorium issue lies in U.S. guarantees that borders are going to be addressed pronto. Once borders come into focus, it matters not if Israel builds within them.

Of course, we can ask the PA (or Hamas? or Islamic Jihad? or...?), no right of return?

Sometimes, Roger, the "world" is really irrelevant if not mistaken:

I don’t believe Israel has yet got to where the world is: the inevitability of a Palestinian state.

And here you are correct:

I don’t believe the Judea and Samaria illusion — all the land — has died entirely in Netanyahu.

And not only him. And who says their 'state' need not go through a process, including autononmy or confederation first?

But Cohen suggest that Obama has

...to agree with Medvedev and Sarkozy and Cameron and Hu that we will go to the Security Council and seek a resolution establishing a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, and suggest that every state recognize it.”

That Israeli worry is some leverage. Netanyahu has to grasp that it’s crunch time.

Cohen wants Israel to worry, to feel under pressure.

That, Mr. Cohen, is not diplomacy.

And you know what, why don't we turn the tables and ask Mr. Obama:

If you can't resolve Iran, which is a far-away danger to Israel (not really, but Cohen doesn't believe it's a danger at all so I have to go slow with slow-thinking people), why should I trust you to solve a much closer danger - and we'll ignore Iran's influence in Lebanon and Gaza.

^