Finkelstein says:

"The claim that Israel has become a liability for U.S. "national" interests in the Middle East misses the bigger picture. Sometimes what's most obvious escapes the eye. Israel is the only stable and secure base for projecting U.S. power in this region. Every other country the U.S. relies on might, for all anyone knows, fall out of U.S. control tomorrow. The U.S.A. discovered this to its horror in 1979, after immense investment in the Shah. On the other hand, Israel was a creation of the West; it's in every respect--culturally, politically, economically--in thrall to the West, notably the U.S. ... Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East."

This is untenable. For one thing, Israel's brand of security is not very useful to the United States. Israel's existence is secure but its military position is, shall we say, tense. To varying degrees and in various ways, it is in armed confrontation with all its neighbors. In fact it is in armed confrontation with most of the the neighbors of its neighbors, and many of *their* neighbors too. Then there are longer-range, long-term threats. Iran, though not about to wipe Israel off the map, is strong and growing stronger. Should Musharraf fall, Israel may well acquire a nuclear-armed enemy in Pakistan, and any change in the Gulf States or Egypt would almost certainly usher in much more militantly anti-Israel rgimes.

No doubt, for the foreseeable future, Israel could obliterate even its strongest enemies with nuclear weapons, perhaps at the price of its own obliteration: is this the sort of security America ought to value? Compare Israel to the some of the allies who, over the years, have actually committed troops to reinforce American ventures--England, for example, or France, Canada, Germany, Holland, Poland, Italy and Australia. These are countries whose local strategic situation enables them to send large proportions of their military resources hundreds or thousands of miles from their border, for long periods of time. The are pretty well without enemies and don't need to threaten nuclear holocausts to keep their opponents at bay. Israel is not such a country.

In arguing for Israel's stability, Finkelstein asserts that "...what's most important at the popular level. Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population." Is that so? I thought there were Palestinians living in Israel. They probably aren't ferociously pro-American or even ferociously Zionist. Their numbers and birth rate are significant enough to constitute what's called a demographic time bomb. In addition there are Israeli dissidents who, like Mordechai Vanunu, are willing to compromise Israel's most important military secrets. Yes, Israel is quite stable, but one must not exaggerate.

Furthermore, what does 'projecting US power' mean? What exactly is this projection system supposed to be? If the US sends troops to the region, it does not do so via Israel. If it sends ships, it does not use Israeli ports. If it sends aircraft, it does not use Israeli airfields. It may use Israeli intelligence a bit, but it also uses Jordanian, Saudi and Egyptian intelligence, and its own monitoring systems do not depend on Israeli satellites. Israel does not supply the US with oil or other vital resources for its military operations. Israeli banks do not wire secret US funds to Middle Eastern capitals. Nor, contrary to Zionist fantasy, is Israel a 'beacon of democracy' to any nation. For thirty years, Israel has granted no say in its government to the millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories, over whom it holds the power of life and death: if anything would sour Middle Eastern people of democracy, it would be Israel's version of it. Israel and the US collaborate on defense projects and some military training, but this is trivial. Western Europe or Canada could easily take up the slack were these relations severed. And most likely at least the Canadians would not spy on the US or sell US technology to China, like some other country one could mention here.

The countries that help US efforts in the Middle East--with oil, bases, airfields, intelligence, ports, pretty much everything--are the Gulf States. These are also the countries which, along with Syria and Egypt but unlike Israel, actually fought side by side with the Americans against Iraq in 1990. Finkelstein apparently thinks these countries might fall out of US control 'tomorrow'. In the first place, Finkelstein has an odd notion of tomorrow; he cites the example of Iran in 1979. That was almost 30 years ago! Iran was utterly unlike the Gulf States: unlike the Shah, their rulers largely share their subjects' religious convictions, do a far better job of providing for their welfare, and have a far more manageable territory to control.

It is true that pundits have been predicting the collapse of Gulf states any day now. The trouble is that 'any day now' has lengthened into many years, with no sign of any such collapse.

All dissent has been suppressed with ease and terror attacks have had only the most limited success. Moreover there is no chance whatever that the US would permit hostile forces to take over the Gulf States: precisely because Iran is lost, Gulf States oil is indeed indispensable. The idea that Gulf States governments, with full US support a stone's throw from their cities, could not prevail over any revolt arising from their sparse, well-off populations, is laughable. Moreover these countries are quite as much 'in thrall' to the US as Israel. Indeed one wonders which Arab states have not moved *closer* to the US since 1979--even Syria, which was a military ally of the US in the first war with Iraq. So, in the first place, Israel offers nothing to the US, and, in the second, other countries provide very secure bases for US action. The most secure bases of all, though, float on the sea. The US relies on its fleet and can easily launch devastating attacks without any land bases at all. So the geopolitics that make Israel an essential base are quite mystifying.

Then Israel is supposed to have indispensable, overwhelming military power. If the power is indispensable, why did the US dispense with it on the only occasions when it might have come in handy, namely the last two Gulf Wars? If it is overwhelming, why is it that Israel was almost overwhelmed in its last real war, in October 1972, when it avoided defeat only because the US came in and replaced the weapons it had lost in the fighting? Why couldn't Egypt replace Israel as a US ally? Is it somehow less capable of receiving massive US aid? Egypt's instability--which is probably less than supposed--would quickly vanish were it so lucky as Israel with American largesse, and were America to wean itself of its attachment to Israel, which discredits all Middle Eastern governments that receive US support.

As a last resort, proponents of the 'valuable ally' dogma insist that Israel intimidates its neighbors. That's true, but it's not the point. Why would anyone think that the US needs Israel to do this? America can, has, and does intimidate Israel's neighbors, and their neighbors, very effectively, all on its own. Why then is Israeli intimidation so valuable?

The view that Israel is an indispensable ally is a contagious disease of the Zionist imagination. We are taught to regard Israel as standing shoulder to shoulder with the US government in some nebulous battle. What battle is that? The US fights all its battles without Israel, and always has. As for Israel's supposed prowess in all things military, technological and espionage related, this is another myth. Israel has had all manner of intelligence pratfalls and certainly did not spare the US from the Middle Eastern attackers on 9-11, nor did it ever get Iraqi military capabilities right.

Last time we looked, its battlefield performance was less than impressive, though of course it is very good at bullying Palestinians armed with the equivalent of slingshots--oh, and sometimes slingshots are literally all they have to fight with. But the idea that Israel is an indispensable US ally is more than false; it is deadly to the Palestinians.

If Israel is indispensable, then the Palestinians might as well forget about having minimally tolerable lives, because only breaking the US-Israel alliance can spare them their agonies.

The break cannot occur unless America realizes that Israel is a huge liability: it is not as if the American government will suddenly gush with compassion for the Palestinians and change its ways out of pure altruism. The rest of the world doesn't matter: it could hardly be clearer that Israel, with America as its ally, can thumb its nose at the rest of the world.

That's the situation which the false doctrine of Israel as valuable ally perpetuates.

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just been republished by Broadview Press. He contributed the essay, "What is Anti-Semitism", to CounterPunch's book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. His latest book is The Case Against Israel. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca.

There are many contradictions here. No matter how sloppily the Walt-Mearsheimer article was researched and written, few Jews deny that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other large Jewish institutions lobby successfully for Israel. Meanwhile, along with the outrage mainstream leaders have voiced about their portrayal, there may be for some a lingering feeling of "if only" the lobby was indeed as omnipotent and united as Walt and Mearsheimer fear.

In truth, there is not one lobby on behalf of Israel but many, and the relationship between American and Israeli Jews is complicated. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American Jews who take issue with some or all of the positions voiced by AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. And, to the dismay of many Americans who work to support a secure and democratic Israel, there is a growing disconnect between American Jews and the Zionism many of us used to take for granted.

Why is this so? Research on the topic demonstrates that some of the fracture can actually be attributed to good news: American Jews feel so comfortable in their lives and their positions in society that they no longer see themselves in a Diaspora, but in a promised land of their own. For many, the Zionism of 50 years ago was rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust, and represented safe haven of last resort. Nowadays, one would have to look long and hard for Americans who truly distrust the viability of their future in the United States.

But not all the news is good. Many American Jews find it hard to square their civil rights values with the behavior of successive Israeli governments. For them, the expansion of settlements as a reflection of the nationalist-religious dream of a greater Israel leads inevitably to ongoing human-rights abuses. On other issues, too, those who care about social justice are uneasy when they see Israel as a country with broad social inequities, poor education and growing environmental problems.

While Israelis have the benefit of a democratic electoral system that allows them to change direction, American Jews too often are unable to square their impressions of Israel with their personal ethics and values. They believe their only choice is "Israel right or wrong," or apathy and disconnection from Israel.

This is a false dichotomy. Just as the United States has an ACLU, a People for the American Way and several versions of NOW, the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Justice, which focus on the inequities and challenges facing American society, Israel has parallel organizations, in many cases modeled after their American counterparts and nurtured by the New Israel Fund (NIF). Indeed, the 140 or so Israeli organizations we currently support provide many American Jews with meaningful opportunities for affinity and cooperation.

For 27 years, NIF has funded and trained thousands of activists who help Israel live up to the promises enshrined in its own Declaration of Independence and values informed by the Jewish tradition and international human rights norms. This willingness to speak directly about Jewish values, and to implement programs promoting Jewish awareness, while maintaining an absolute commitment to equality and social justice, serves to counter the apathy many Israelis, particularly in the younger generation, feel about their Jewishness.

A global Gallup poll sponsored by the BBC recently discovered that Israelis have more faith in their democracy than almost any other nationality - including U.S. citizens. It's time for more Americans to share that optimism. Striving for social justice, a peaceful future and full-fledged civic participation for all segments of society will serve to ensure Israel's survival as decidedly as the correct foreign policy and military decisions.

Instead of wasting energy on those, both left and right, who misrepresent Israel and its American supporters, those who care about Israel's future in the broadest sense should make their voices heard in both countries. When we make clear that our bond is based on both ancient Jewish and contemporary universal values, the way will be cleared for a better, stronger and more multifaceted relationship between the world's two largest Jewish communities.

Larry Garber is executive director of the New Israel Fund.

The number of immigrants from France totaled 2,100 in 2003, rose to 2,415 in 2004 and reached 3,000 in 2005. The rise in the number of French Jews moving to Israel is proportionally more significant, since half a million Jews live in France, as opposed to some 6 million Jews in the United States.

Of course, if the paper caused such uproar in the public sphere, you'd think academia (and particularly the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where Walt is the academic dean) would be, as the Harvard Crimson put it, the ultimate "field of battle." And as far as conspiratorial rumors and unexplained reversals go, it has been.

The Kennedy School pulled its name off the article, nervous to be associated with the argument that an expansive lobby is undermining American interests on behalf of the Jewish state. Bob Belfer, the fabulously wealthy (and Jewish) oil baron who endowed Walt's chair at the Kennedy School, was hopping mad. Angry donors reportedly threatened to retract gifts. Whispers began that faculty relationships were fraying, and gossip circulated that campus forces were plotting to oust Walt from panels and boards. Harvard had to deny that his decision to step down as dean had anything to do with the paper.

But something else happened at Harvard, something strange. Instead of a roiling debate, most professors not only agreed to disagree but agreed to pretend publicly that there was no disagreement at all. At Harvard and other schools, the Mearsheimer-Walt paper proved simply too hot to handle - and it revealed an academia deeply split yet lamentably afraid to engage itself on one of the hottest political issues of our time. Call it the academic Cold War: distrustful factions rendered timid by the prospect of mutually assured career destruction.

A couple of weeks ago, keeping in mind Henry Kissinger's famous aphorism that academic quarrels are so vicious because the stakes are so small, I began calling around Harvard, expecting to find a major fight flourishing. Spirited exchanges! A divided faculty! Parties canceled! Walt egged!

Instead, most people I spoke to assured me that, at Harvard, there is no controversy. Most everyone, they said, agreed about the paper. But what they all "agreed" on, hilariously, depended on whom I was talking to.

One anecdote illuminated the puzzle. At a faculty meeting, the paper came up, and the department head remarked that she was sure everyone had the same reaction when they read it - approval. One professor piped up: "No, this article is rubbish!" The room became very quiet. Finally, someone changed the subject. Through moments like these, a de facto consensus developed not to discuss the paper at all.

Most professors I reached wouldn't speak on the record about the flap because they didn't want their feelings to become known on campus. Walt ignored my requests for comment. Harvard's Alan Dershowitz, one of just a few professors who have conspicuously denounced the paper, says that when he was scheduled for a BBC face-off with Mearsheimer, the author mysteriously canceled moments before airtime.

Most fishily, one Kennedy School professor who had previously gone public with his opinions clammed up completely, explaining cryptically to me that even chatting off the record about the paper isn't "the right thing for me to do at this time." Another senior Kennedy School professor admitted that he was baffled by the dearth of discussion of the paper. "We debate everything else here," he said.

The closest we've gotten to open academic argument over the paper is an online petition circulated by Juan Cole, a media-hungry professor-blogger at the University of Michigan, condemning the paper's critics for "McCarthyite race-baiting." It has garnered nearly 1,000 professors' signatures.

But even Cole's petition - many signers of which haven't read the paper - exemplifies how, instead of knocking heads over the paper's core argument, it's become acceptable merely to debate drier questions of academic standards. Critics condemn the paper as shoddy scholarship; supporters, such as Cole, insist that the academic world's primary ethic is the right to say whatever you believe.

But make a list of how professors have come out on this divide and you'll find it is an awfully neat proxy for deeper ideological divisions. Those who dislike the U.S. relationship with Israel suddenly find themselves champions of free speech; those supportive of Israel are recast as defenders of high standards of scholarship. It's just that nobody can talk about that schism.

So is this collective campus lip-sealing evidence that Mearsheimer and Walt are right that the Israel Lobby squelches criticism? No, because professors fear taking a stand on either side.

Professors I spoke to offered various reasons they must tiptoe around the paper: That its style was too provocative. That they're skittish after witnessing Harvard President Larry Summers' ouster for making fractious comments. That the long-running PC wars have made them tired of controversy. That it's too "personal."

Most interestingly, they explained that topics related to the Middle East, though they provoke some of the deepest divisions in opinion between faculty members, are just too strewn with ideological landmines for them because academics are supposed to be above dogma - an explanation that also sheds light on why most Middle East studies departments languish in mediocrity and lack influential senior faculty.

And most sadly, professors admitted that academia's notorious office politics - in uniquely volatile combination with all these other reasons - interfere with natural reactions to the paper, resulting in a collective response that one described as "nervous laughter."

"A lot of [my colleagues] were more concerned about the academic politics of it, and where they should come down, in that sense," another Ivy League professor told me, ruefully.

But isn't this all a little bit ironic? Mearsheimer and Walt clearly wrote their paper to be provocative. They took pleasure in breaking a taboo - only to see another one erected around their work. And universities ought to be the centers of debate about ideas, right? "It's perhaps not a great reflection on academia - perhaps we should be more out there," mused Princeton's Andrew Moravcsik, who calls himself an "idealist" about his profession.

Now the world needs to pause for a moment and ask itself, how come one small country can make a mockery of it in this way and cause great powers to act in such an unintelligent way? Anyone who examines the decision by the Quartet to boycott the Hamas government cannot but wonder where Israel gets the power to squeeze out more and more decisions that are contrary to the international interest and, in fact, to its own interests. The world, which is not interested in a humanitarian disaster in Rafah, should have immediately rejected the Israeli demand to stop transferring aid to the territories, instead of being dragged into this farce that has not yet ended. Will Israel's imagined diplomatic strength serve it in the long term? Certainly not. The day will come when the world will tire of the unnecessary games Israel and the United States force upon it.

It is necessary to go back to the two eternal verities: First of all, the Palestinian people elected Hamas in democratic elections, which were held at the initiative of the United States and with Israel's agreement; secondly, the state of Israel bears the responsibility for the fate of the population in the occupied territories. You wanted elections? Hamas was elected. You wanted to topple the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization? Here are the results. You want occupation? You have to pay the price. There is no way of escaping this.

The 165,000 families whose meager living comes from the PA have had to live for the past two months without a salary. In such a poor and shaky economy this is of tremendous significance. The vast majority of 3.5 million Palestinians are living in acute economic distress, to which the shortage that derives from the aid freeze has now been added. In the occupied territories a people is living that has no way to support itself, as all of the possibilities are closed to it, it has no way of entering the labor market in Israel, it has no sea port or airport and scores of barriers prevent it from moving around. It has no way out.

The world has chosen to take indirect responsibility for what is happening: Instead of bringing about an end to the occupation, it prefers to grant aid. For the fans of the occupation in Israel this is a very convenient solution, so it is impossible to understand why Israel has tried to sabotage this, too. Why is transferring money through the incorrupt Hamas unacceptable and transferring money through the corrupt Fatah acceptable? The assumption that economic pressure on the PA will lead to the fall of the elected government was a crazy idea. Pressure of this kind only reinforces Hamas and hostility toward Israel. There is no "Hamas bypass" road. Israel and the world must recognize this. Any diplomatic or economic progress will henceforth go through the headquarters of the movement that was elected to govern. Just as the economic boycott held up for only a few weeks, the diplomatic boycott will also not last long. Sweden has already welcomed in its territory two representatives of Hamas, the other European countries will follow suit, the United States will have to join in, and Israel's turn will also come, hideously late, of course, and it will recognize the Hamas government. Therefore, it is necessary to ask: Why wait? The lesson from the short-lived economic boycott must be learned now. Israel has already missed the Abu Mazen train and he is now the Palestinian Shimon Peres: It's pleasant to talk to him but what he says no longer has much influence or significance. Yet, nevertheless, having allotted half a year to diplomatic negotiations, Israel must immediately initiate a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) if it really wants to negotiate. Instead of traveling to Washington and Cairo, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should have gone to Ramallah first.

A certain withered diplomatic logic does underlie this measure. The PA itself was invented in 1995 to administer Oslo's implicit two-state solution. Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's "right to exist" would seem to negate the diplomatic agreement that established the terms of its own authority. Until it agrees to those terms, the international community might deem that Hamas has rendered the PA's legitimacy uncertain.

Unfortunately for its proponents, this rationale has crashed on one glaring pitfall: the premise that Israel itself supports the terms of Oslo or the Road Map. Prime Minister Olmert has openly declared the "Road Map" a dead letter. His stated policy of "ingathering" settlers into the major West Bank settlement blocs is accepted by everyone as signaling Israel's intent permanently to annex major portions of the West Bank. The advancing Wall and settlement construction are ample material evidence that this plan is Israel's real program and is already half-achieved. No one disagrees that these developments signify permanent territorial dismemberment of any Palestinian "state." No one disagrees that the terms of Oslo have vanished like the morning mist.

It must therefore be evident even to the EU, Norway, and Canada that Israel has negated the diplomatic agreement that established the terms of its recognition by the Palestinians. So why pretend that Israel has not openly cast onto the trash heap of history the very peace deal that these countries now insist Hamas endorse?

The first answer is too obvious to belabor: craven capitulation to US pressure. The entire international community has been cajoled or threatened into continuing lip service to the Road Map while standing by passively as the US and Israel render the Road Map obsolete. Diplomatic nonsense always requires some political or moralistic palliative, however. The cover story is that Hamas's recognizing Israel's "right to exist" and abandoning armed struggle will somehow restore the diplomatic conditions of the Road Map, trigger comprehensive Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, and allow peace finally to break out. Let us take this argument step by step.

First, it is simply unbelievable. All agree that Israel's withdrawal of major settlement blocs in the West Bank (especially, the major cities of Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel, and Gush Etzion) is not foreseeable. The Israeli government itself has declared them permanent. No international actor or combination of actors has the political will and/or clout to change Israeli policy. Israel will not withdraw the major settlement blocs under any circumstances short of a national emergency. Hamas's suddenly waxing nice will not constitute that emergency.

Second, the argument adopts specious Israeli claims about Arab logics that only dwindling ranks of Israel's die-hard supporters still believe. Israeli propaganda holds that Arab "hatred" for Israel is irrational, born solely of Judeophobia, religious zealotry, and cultural backwardness, and that tough measures can therefore leverage Arab capitulation to reality even while the occupation continues. In this view, Israel's hold on the West Bank is not really an "occupation," serving a program of land annexation, but only a benign "administration," forced on Israel by collective Arab and Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel's "right to exist."

The funding cut-off endorses this fantasy in holding that Hamas has rejected Israel's authentic "promise of peace" due to its rejectionist Islamic dogma and not because Hamas has graphic evidence that Israel has no intention of permitting Palestinians a viable state. In this twisted view, cutting vital funds should make Hamas rethink this "irrationality," abandon its "extremism," recognize Israel's "right to exist," and end all hostile actions toward it. Hamas and the PA will then be rewarded (it is hinted vacantly) with a return to the Road Map.

Aside from its transparent tomfoolery (full awareness the US and Israel are eliminating the conditions for the Road Map as quickly as possible), deeper problems plague this papery notion. For if we look more closely at what Hamas is being asked to do, none of it makes sense either.

What does a "right to exist" mean exactly? There is no "right to exist" for states under international law. The formula has arisen in international diplomacy uniquely regarding Israel. It does not mean simply diplomatic recognition, which is the "fact" of existence. It does not mean recognizing Israel's "right to self-determination," either, or we would be using that famous term.

Let us pretend for a moment that Hamas is being asked to recognize Israel in the normal diplomatic sense. In this case, however, the EU position is unsupportable, because diplomatic recognition of a state routinely requires one bit of vital information: "right to exist" where? Israel's borders are not set. Even its plans for those borders are not known; with impressive brashness, Mr. Olmert has announced that we will not know until 2010.

It is entirely legitimate for Hamas to require firm confirmation of Israel's borders before recognizing it. It should also be incumbent on the international community to confirm where those borders will be before insisting that Hamas recognize Israel's "right" to them. Otherwise, recognizing Israel's "right to exist" could be construed to mean that Israel has a "right to exist" within whatever borders it chooses in coming years.

As the Palestinians stand to lose most of what is left of their homeland to this fuzziness, Hamas is refusing to endorse it. Is this extremist Islamic intransigence, warranting a funding freeze? Let us run a little thought experiment: Would Canadian, or Norwegian, or English, or French governments be called on the international carpet for not recognizing the "right to exist" of a neighboring state that is, with military force, settling its own ethnically defined population within contiguous walled cities and enclaves in Canadian, Norwegian, English or French national territories, while promising to carve those nations into "cantons?"

Absent clear borders, recognizing Israel's "right to exist" must mean something else. And of course it does. Clearly implicit in the term is Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. In other words, the "right" Hamas is being required to endorse is that Israel can legitimately compose itself as a state in Palestine that is populated and run primarily by Jews, primarily for Jews. Such a state would thus be authorized by Hamas to sustain whatever laws and policies necessary to preserving its Jewish majority, even rejecting the return of Palestinian refugees mandated by international law. Or building a massive Wall on Palestinian land designed to protect the Jewish state from the "demographic threat" of mass non-Jewish citizenship-i.e., the Palestinians. Israel's would also be legitimized for past actions on the same agenda, such as expelling the Palestinians from their homes in 1948, and for its future plans, such as confining Palestine's indigenous people to cantons.

Israel's leadership has declared all these measures necessary to preserve Israel as "a Jewish and democratic state," as phrased in Israel's Basic Law (and reiterated by Mr. Sharon, Mr. Olmert, and almost every Israeli party across the political spectrum). Yet it is not the fact of this open policy of ethnic cleansing, but Israel's right to pursue it, that is expressed in the phrase, "right to exist."

Hence bitter reluctance by the PLO, the Arab states, and much of the Muslim world to do so for many decades. They abandoned that position in 1989-90, as a pragmatic gesture toward a two-state solution. Cannot the EU then insist that Hamas recognize Israel's "right to exist" if the PLO, the PA, and all other governments in the world have recognized it?

The problem is that the quid pro quo that supported this recognition, formalized in the Oslo process, is now clearly wrecked by Israel's unilateral annexations of land. Carving the West Bank into cantons has eliminated any hope of a viable Palestinian state. The two-state solution is not working. In these conditions, should Hamas recognize Israel's "right to exist" if it is recognized to be eliminating Palestinian sovereignty altogether?

The more embarrassing problem, however, is that the EU itself has not explicitly recognized Israel's "right to exist" in this sense. Nor has Canada, or Norway. The United Nations has not done so, either. They haven't, because they can't.

This may take some people by surprise, but the UN has not used the term "Jewish state" since 1947. Resolution 181 then called for a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state," with gerrymandered borders designed to craft Jewish and Arab majorities in each state. But the attempt was rendered obsolete when Zionist forces established "Israel" on a much greater swath of territory that had, in total, held a substantial Arab majority, and expelled most of the Arab residents. As refugees, according to the Geneva Conventions, those Arab residents have the right to return to their homes, villages, towns and cities. But their return would eliminate the Jewish majority in what became "Israel," so Israel hasn't allowed this.

Hence the UN cannot confirm Israel as a Jewish state (i.e., a state that can legitimately sustain a Jewish majority) without contradicting international law regarding the right of refugees. When the UN refers to "Israel" today, it does not understand Israel as the "Jewish state" in the old ethnic-majority terms of 1947, because Israel can be granted no "right" to an ethnic demography that would prevent the return of refugees.

Also, times have simply changed. In 1947, ethnic nationalism still made some belated sense, although it was already discredited by the dreadful abuses wreaked by Germany and Japan. Today, recognizing the "right" of any state to compose itself legally as an ethnic-majority state would clearly flout UN conventions on human rights and non-discrimination. The UN and EU therefore cannot openly endorse Israel's right to compose itself as one. It would make hash of international efforts in Rwanda, the Sudan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and many other crisis spots.

So the US has lured the EU, Canada, and Norway into a trap. If they hold that Hamas must recognize Israel as a Jewish state (with a right to preserve an ethnic-Jewish majority), then they must state clearly that it endorses ethnic-majority governance. But them themselves cannot explicitly endorse Israel's right to ethnocracy, because it would contradict international law as well as its own diplomacy in a host of other conflict zones, so on what grounds does they require Hamas to do so?

Worse for them, they are adhering to international norms in insisting that the State of Palestine must comprise a stable democracy that secures equal rights for all its citizens irrespective of religion or race. But if they hold Palestine to this standard, then why are they not holding Israel to the same standard?

But if they did hold Israel to that standard, then the entire rationale for a two-state solution would evaporate. The Road Map is based on the supposition that the only peaceful solution in Palestine is to establish one state for Jews and another for everyone else. If Israel's "right to exist" does not entail sustaining a Jewish majority (which necessitates discriminatory legislation, ethnic cleansing, land grabs, and social engineering), then the ethnic logic supporting two states disappears. Why agree to compose two secular-democratic states sitting next to each other in this small land? No one can articulate an answer, because ethnic demography is their only rationale.

So what are the EU, Norway and Canada requiring Hamas to do? Recognize Israel as an ethnic state with a "right to exist" wherever it decides to set its borders-even though doing so would not only mean Palestinian national suicide but would violate principles that govern their own diplomacy as well as their own internal laws and values about nondiscrimination? Or is Hamas supposed to evade the issue by recognizing Israel's "right to exist" simply as a normal state, even though "normal" (non-ethnic) status would then obligate Israel to permit Palestinian refugees to return-thus implying that the EU, Norway and Canada do not support Israel in sustaining a Jewish majority?

This conundrum should have diplomats, parliamentarians, and foreign ministries huddled in their back rooms trying to sort out their own positions, rather than attempting to starve the Palestinians into Hamas's capitulation. For it is not only the funding freeze that has become rampant nonsense. The entire Road Map logic has become nonsense, too.

May its dutiful proponents in foreign capitals lie sleepless in their beds contemplating their own confusion and the terrible bloody consequences it is likely to wreak.

Virginia Tilley is associate professor of Political Science and International Relations, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock. She is currently at the Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, South Africa and available at tilley@hws.edu.

A Palestinian source told Ynet Friday that the message declared the Palestinians' willingness to openly and officially endorse the establishment of Palestine on the borders of June 1967, as long as they did not have to publicly and officially recognize Israel's right to exist.

According to the Palestinian source, Hamas has decided it would consent to this phrasing -"the recognition of a Palestinian state next to Israel" - in order to bypass the international demand to officially recognize Israel's existence. The letter notes that ensuing political negotiations would be steered by the PLO and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the source said.

Russia was apparently involved in convincing Hamas to adopt this phrasing of accepting in principle neighboring Palestinian and Israeli states, without recognizing Israel, the source said, and in return, the Russians played an important role in the Quartet's decision to grant the PA a special aid package, and promised to urge the renewal international aid.

Hamas hopes for renewed ties with EU

The Palestinian cabinet and Hamas hope that the next step after receiving financial aid from Russian and their other allies in the Gulf, an official channel of contact would open with the European Union that will allow renewed funding of the PA.

The source noted that Hamas committed to maintaining calm among the Palestinian factions, and enforcing the Islamic Jihad, which has been responsible for all suicide bomb attacks in Israel in the past year, to refrain from terrorism, on the condition that financial aid was renewed.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad recently reached an understanding that if financial support is resumed, the Jihad would also commit to the cease-fire. The agreement was reached by leaders of the organization abroad, which are generally thought to be more fanatical.

In recent days, especially since the last meeting between Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas is holding heated discussions on instituting an official stance that would hopefully ease the international community's isolation of the Palestinian government, without surrendering its position against recognizing Israel. Hamas has addressed the issue in public this week as well. Hamas parliament speaker Khaled Suleiman said that his party has no problem in recognizing a Palestinian state next to Israel according to the 1967 borders.