Podcast: Micah Goodman on the Right Way to Reduce the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

This Week’s Guest: Micah Goodman

If you follow Israeli politics, then you know that within the past year, the Jewish state has experienced two deadlocked elections. What explains this political stalemate?

According to Micah Goodman, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, Israeli politics is trapped in a Catch-67. Most Israelis have been persuaded by the right’s argument that peace with the Palestinians isn’t feasible any time soon and that withdrawal from the West Bank would be a security nightmare. But most also agree with the left’s argument that Israeli control over the West Bank is a demographic time-bomb that poses a threat to the nation’s character as a Jewish and democratic state. They think, in sum, that establishing a Palestinian state right now would be a disaster and that remaining in the territories would also be a disaster.