> No, they didn't.

When have hey ever accepted a two state solution? They have denied everyone since 1947, in Oslo they agreed that resolution 338 (the 1967 borders) should be the basis for negotiation but Arafat walked out of Camp David despite what many Palestinians considered favorable terms and what most Israeli's considered an over generous offer.

> Incited in large part by Netanyahu, who was determined to sabotage Oslo and who openly denied the possibility of a 2-state solution.

His rise to power happened 2 years after though, after an entire year of Hamas suicide bombings. He was not ahead in the polls until the security situation went completely tits up.

If a crazy person kills the president (like in Japan 2 years ago, or in America with JFK) there is no sudden far right take over. If a country is attacked by its neighbour, people who promise security tend to do well in the polls.

> Also for all of Rabin's positives, he still insisted on expanding West Bank settlements during the Oslo interim period.

The settlements are a complicated subject. There are some legitimate reasons for some of them, and the reality of the two state solution is that land swaps will happen.

The 1967 war ended in 6 days and ended with incredibly awkward borders. It is not unnatural that Israel and Palestine wrestle for borders that make more sense geographically. (Belgium and Germany did this post ww2 and now most of their border is forest or rivers, mountains. The usual suspects for national borders).

There are however also religious settlements, formed by crazy people based on ridiculous readings of the torah. All of those should be burned to the ground with every person on them jailed, and the leader of the movement who I shall not named probably put in a cross due to her devotion to religious literature.

Talking about settlements as a whole makes the conversation too broad and unfocused, and I doubt all military outposts that exist will be dismantled when peace is achieved.

> Ariel Sharon is responsible for the Second Intifada, his fascist march on the Temple Mount was a deliberate provocation.

Its pretty cool how people have no agency. Lets ignore that the temple mount is more holy to the jews than to muslims. And lets act like a far right agitator is purposefully going to somewhere holy.

Imagine Trump goes to the vaticam. Do you think that the pope would use a loud speaker to tell people to attack him Abu Qteish did?

Or that Italians would suicide bomb around american civilians for the next 3 years?

Like even if we take Ariel visit as provacation, even if we hold him repsonsible for the horrible mismanagement of the police during his interior minister time, we hold him responsible for every death occured in every over trigger happy incident. Why fall for the bait? Why kill innocent people who are not responsible for his actions?

Also if we are gonna use the word fascist, I think its important to note the different countries and structures between Israel and lets say Gaza. Fascism purges "the other", there are no minorities in Gaza. Israel has 20% arab population and 7% other (mostly chrristians). Fascism promotes youth and violence as means of authority. Gaza has the youngest population in the world, and a military dictatorship as a goverment. A big part of fascism is social hierarchy, in the case of Gaza a strong men over women duplicity is seen across all civilian and political life. And finally an important aspect of fascism is the idea of forming an empire. This tracks with two biggest groups in Gaza having ideas about a pan arabic caliphate.

> Liar. [1] Shlaim - The Iron Wall

To begin with "the political will" usually refers to the people

https://www.fpri.org/article/2014/02/an-opening-for-peace-is...

here is some of the data from 03 - 12 during a series of escalations of violence the Israeli opinion was still very much in favour of a two state solution. This has been the case since 1947.

Now in response to the book. I will say that I love the work the new Historians are doing but Shlaim is with Benny Morris one of the modern historians where its very easy to see their ideology through their work.

Here is an interesting interview with him.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070909015709/http://www.fromoc...

and here is Benny Morris (who despite being racist towards arabs recently has written and opened most of the secrets about the formation of Israel) talking about the blind spots of the Iron Wall.

https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/40847

Another thing to point out is that Shailm tends to ignore things that are inconvinient. For example in that interview he emphasises the push from Egypt to normalise relationships with Israel in the 50s. He somehow forgets that the Egyptian push for the 1947 was crazy. Azzam Pasha leader of the arab league said " it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades". With the King Farrouk later repeating the sentiment saying "the jews will be expelled from Palestine". So that same state "reaching out" less than 5 years later is pretty throny and it seems irresponsible to call that Israel rejecting peace, when at the time the Suez Crisis was bubbling and Egypt had tons of troops in Gaza.