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about John Rawls and John Locke, a social contract between the
government and the governed. A Palestinian government that denies
his rights, he insisted, is as offensive as an Israeli one. When I
pressed him on whether his colleagues want two states—one
Palestinian, one Jewish—or a secular binational one, he seemed
strangely agnostic. He said that in an ideal world one democratic state
would be better, before adding that of course such a state would have
to guarantee the safety and cultural autonomy of Jews. (One of his
inspirations, he said, was Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher who
advocated a binational state in the 1920s and 1930s). When I said I
didn’t consider a binational state very realistic, he conceded the
point, before noting that in the age of Netanyahu and Lieberman,
most Palestinians don’t consider a two-state solution very realistic
either. After a while, it hit me: This is what Israelis and American
Jews have been demanding all along. Didn’t we always say, during
the bloody Arafat years, that when the Palestinians produced Gandhis
everything would change? We’d never be able to resist; our Jewish
hearts would melt. Now that it’s starting to happen, I suspect the
response will be exactly the opposite: Yes, there’s something
admirable about young people like Fadi Quran, but who are they
kidding. This is the Middle East, not Palo Alto. It’s no place for
dreamers; they’ll get eaten for lunch.
Privately, many in Congress consider settlement expansion a
catastrophe and the occupation a disgrace.
Maybe so. But watching over Fadi’s shoulder as members of
Congress robotically rose to applaud Netanyahu, I couldn’t help
thinking of the contrast. Anyone who has spent any time around
Congress knows that many of the people who applauded Netanyahu—
the Jewish Democrats in particular—don’t actually support his
policies. Privately, many consider settlement expansion a catastrophe
and the occupation a disgrace. But they don't want to create

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