Haaretz: The 'Two-state Solution' Only Ever Meant a Big Israel Ruling Over a Palestinian Bantustan. Let It Go

This is a skewered view, to say the least. In fact, every Israeli government since 1967 has failed to live up to those proud liberal values by pursuing an expanded Israel ruling over a truncated Palestinian Bantustan, even if they did it under the guise of a "two-state solution."

Within weeks of the start of the occupation in 1967, the Allon Plan (under Labor prime minister Levi Eshkol) already proposed Israel annexing territory surrounding and isolating the Palestinian population centers. [...]

By Oslo’s end in 2000, there were 400,000 settlers in massive "settlement blocs" that fragmented the Palestinian territory into some 70 tiny enclaves of Areas A and B, plus the prison that is Gaza. Today, the settler population approaches 800,000.

If the two-state solution is gone, it is because of successive "sane" Israelis in government, in particular those of Golda Meir and Ehud Barak, as well as of the Likud, Kadima and the religious right, and the Zionist left, "hard" right, and the always malleable center that put them into office. [...]

But Yoffie is also wrong about how he characterizes what he calls the "hard left's" one-statism. Left groups who acknowledge the death of the two-state solution have not moved to a one-state alternative – at least not yet. Jewish Voice for Peace, which Yoffie demonizes because of its support for BDS, does not actively advocate for such a solution. And the rest of the "hard" left is still wrestling with where to go.

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Haaretz: Abbas Is Right. Why Does Israel Keep Saying He's Wrong?

From Nadav Eyal ("a wacky, despicable speech") to Ben Dror Yemini ("delusional ideology"), they all competed for who will attack Abbas more. Nobody faced up to what he said. After all, he swore at Donald Trump, the champion of refined rhetoric, "may your house be demolished," and the Israelis with their sensitive ears were oh so appalled. And he said colonialism, and the self-victimizing Israelis yelled: "anti-Semitism." Nobody said what was incorrect in his speech and what was anti-Semitic about it. Except perhaps for "the Dutch fleet that brought Jews here," Abbas spoke the truth. It's hard to swallow. Israel chose to shriek. It always does when it has no answers.

Abbas said the Oslo agreement was over. Indeed, what is left of it, some 20 years after the final-status agreement was due to be signed? Israel did everything it could to sabotage it. Every soldier who invades A territories every night and every prisoner left in prison from before the Oslo agreement is a violation of it. [...]

Wasn't he telling the truth when he protested against Trump's deranged argument that the Palestinians foiled the negotiations? A super power that punishes the occupied instead of the occupier – that's an inexplicable matter. Instead of stopping to finance and arm the occupier, the United States is stopping the funds to the rescue organization assisting the occupied party's refugees. It's insane. Abbas responded with restraint. American ambassadors Nikki Haley and David Friedman are indeed friends of the occupier and enemies of international law; how can those two oddballs be described in any other way?

But the main shock happened when Abbas touched the rawest Israeli nerves and classified Zionism as part of the colonial project. What is incorrect here? When a sinking colonial power promises a country it isn't ruling yet to a nation whose absolute majority doesn't live in it, while ignoring the nation that does – what is it if not colonialism? When more than half the country is promised to less than a tenth of its residents, what is it if not a terrible injustice?

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Politico: How Juncker can make his final year count

The widening divisions between North and South, East and West — prompted by the refugee and euro crises — are also potential blemishes on his record. The fault lines created by these crises have weakened the relevance of the Brussels-based institutions, and have put his legacy in jeopardy. [...]

His first target should be to deliver on the idea of a “Europe that protects.” As populist and far-right parties continue to gain traction across the bloc, it’s crucial that the EU show its citizens it can protect and empower them, rather than make them feel vulnerable and lacking in agency.

Europe’s citizens care less about spreading universal values and enlarging the Union than they do about feeling protected. That will only become more true as the threats of terrorism and cyberwarfare become more acute and authoritarian powers continue to agitate outside the EU’s borders. The EU needs to become a more muscular union in response to these threats. [...]

But the early signs of the Permanent Structured Cooperation agreement (PESCO) are worrying. Rather than push ahead with a few determined members countries, PESCO includes an unworkably high number of countries — 25 so far — including spoiler nations such as Cyprus, whose main goal is to block EU-NATO relations. This will cripple the agreement’s effectiveness. [...]

The world’s tech giants listen to what Brussels has to say, because they know a Commission decision could change their regulatory environment worldwide. This is especially true after the Commission hit Apple and Google with extraordinary fines in antitrust cases. If Europe challenges the way tech giants do business, so might other regulators who lack the economic weight to take them on by themselves.

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Social Europe: Why The European Parliament’s ‘Democratic Defici’t Is Unfounded

Figure 1 indicates that average party voters are broadly well represented in the EP, but also that the two distributions are different to a statistically significant degree. The two points of the curve where there is a lack of overlap are the left-of-centre and the right-wing sections. Figure 1 indicates that there are more political parties in the section slightly left of centre than there are party voters, and that there are more voters in the right-wing section than there are parties. The average position of European voters (slightly left of centre) is therefore over-represented by political parties serving in the EP7. The EP7 very accurately represented the middle of the 2009 party voters’ ideological distribution. Political parties representing extreme voters, however, appear to have moved towards the centre, leaving some ideological positions without representation, especially on the economic right. The representation deficit of the European Parliament is, therefore, at most a ‘pluralism’ deficit given that the majoritarian norm of democracy seems respected. [...]

Social class differences in political participation and in the composition of parliaments have previously been documented. However, these structural disadvantages of the working classes do not seem to lead to higher incongruence at the European Parliament level. If anything, the upper classes seem to suffer from slightly higher incongruence. The social class non-finding is heartening, given the class biases in political representation that have been documented in established democracies. [...]

The analysis shows that the average European is very well represented in these ‘inputs’ to the EU political system, and that representation flaws are due to voters’ extremism, to voters not voting appropriately (e.g. selecting a party whose constituent base is ideologically ‘far’ from them, or engaging in second-order/protest voting) or to voters not following the European Parliament election campaign. Social group biases due to structural inequalities are not at all evident in the European Parliament.

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Social Europe: Racing The Machine

How many existing human jobs are actually “at risk” to robots? According to an invaluable report by the McKinsey Global Institute, about 50% of time spent on human work activities in the global economy could theoretically be automated today, though current trends suggest a maximum of 30% by 2030, depending mainly on the speed of adoption of new technology. The report’s midpoint predictions are: Germany, 24%; Japan, 26%; the United States, 23%; China, 16%; India, 9%; and Mexico, 13%. By 2030, MGI estimates, 400-800 million individuals will need to find new occupations, some of which don’t yet exist.  [...]

The first concerns the length and scope of the transition from the human to the automated economy. Here, the past may be a less reliable guide than we think, because the slower pace of technological change meant that job replacement kept up with job displacement. Today, displacement – and thus disruption – will be much faster, because technology is being invented and diffused much faster. “In advanced economies, all scenarios,” McKinsey writes, “result in full employment by 2030, but transition may include periods of higher unemployment and [downward] wage adjustments,” depending on the speed of adaptation. [...]

The report also recognizes the need to ensure that “wages are linked to rising productivity, so that prosperity is shared with all.” But it ignores the fact that recent productivity gains have overwhelmingly benefited a small minority. Consequently, it pays scant attention to how the choice between work and leisure promised by economists can be made effective for all.  

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