“Years ago, the vast majority of Jewish Israelis made an ugly deal with themselves not to call a spade a spade – that it’s okay to keep on killing and dispossessing Palestinians, to seize their land and build settlements.”

Hagai Al-Ad op-ed at Haaretz

Israel has paid no price and will pay no price for this. The only country in the world that could effectively stop this won’t. Sure, the Europeans will protest but they are irrelevant.  The Arabs will threaten but what does Jordan matter when all the wealthy Arab countries tacitly go along with it. The Russians and/or the Chinese – they will continue to try and do business with Israel no matter. Right-wing American Jews and Christian Zionists will cheer it. Mainstream liberal American Jews will continue to prattle-on about the two state solution while their mouthpieces in the democratic party will feign concern but offer no real counter argument or opposition.

“All this, aside from the main thing: We won’t pay for this. Meaning that all of Israel’s actions in the territories won’t have an international cost in terms of its foreign relations or economy. It was due to such international and economic costs that South Africa’s apartheid regime collapsed. But Israel learned the lesson and acted more cleverly: It didn’t put signs saying “Whites Only” on benches, and it focused on policy-level achievements. In this way Israel became the most successful model of a 21st-century ethno-state without becoming a diplomatic leper.“