Yet again, it seems, Israeli candidates are making the rounds and promising the impossible, the toppling of the Hamas-run statelet in Gaza. It's a really novel idea and only been tried before in 1982, 2000-02, and twice in 2006. Given that this is mostly the same cast of characters seen over previous years, one has to wonder if they know they are full of shit and have just taken to smiling as the ship goes down.
In other news about Israel's slow collapse, I'm starting to wonder if the state could evacuate all the settlers if it wanted to. Remember evacuation of all settlers is a minimum requirement for a two-state solution, which I've long argued is impractical and outside the realm of possibility. During the eviction of settlers from one house in Hebron, the BBC noted that several soldiers were required to remove each settler and whatever the exact number, that's a lot of manpower. There are 400,000+ settlers now living on the wrong side of the green line. Let's say that half would go willingly, that still leaves 200,000 people who would need to be forcibly evicted. The Israeli state might not have the ability, coercively or politically to do so. (See my next post about the coercion constraint) In fact the Israel situation with its settlers (more broadly, its religio-nationalist extremists) shares striking parallels with Pakistan's situation along its northwestern frontier, with the main difference being that in Israeli radicals form a larger share proportionally of the population. In both cases the state's identity is deeply interwined with a less extreme version of the ideology's radical manifestation. See how much easier it is to base your state on fulfilling its duties to its citizens rather than an ideology!
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