In a “Dispatch” at the Atlantic entitled “Losing Patience with Israel,” Robert D. Kaplan writes that many in the administration and “the wider Washington establishment” have “lost patience with what they see as Israeli intransigence over settlements” — and want to impose a peace agreement:

It may actually be in Israel’s best interests for America, Saudi Arabia, and other moderate Arab states to impose a peace agreement by leaning hard on the Palestinians, as America twists Israel’s arm. The result would be the return of almost all of the West Bank to a fundamentally demilitarized Palestinian state, even as many Israeli settlements are dismantled. What other resolution can there be?

Let me take a crack at that: how about a demilitarized Palestinian state, with borders enabling Israel to defend itself, with Israeli settlements within the Palestinian state left in place?

The U.S. has formally promised Israel support for “defensible borders” because such borders are both an American and an Israeli interest: otherwise, the U.S. would have to guarantee indefensible borders with troops on the ground, in a militarily untenable position. Israeli retention of the large settlement blocs is part of “defensible borders” (since the blocs are in militarily strategic locations), and the U.S. explicitly backed them in the 2004 Bush letter. The U.S. cannot honorably renege on that commitment, nor would American interests be served by doing so.

The remaining settlements are by definition minor, with a population less than 2 percent of the putative Palestinian state. If there can be 1 million Arabs in Israel, why can there not be 50,000 Jews in a Palestinian state? To say a Palestinian state could not protect them is an admission that such a state would be unstable and/or anti-Semitic, unlikely in either case to live “side by side, in peace and security” with a Jewish state.

The inability of important writers such as Robert Kaplan to conceive of an alternative to a Judenrein Palestinian state on almost all the West Bank is an unfortunate example of how appeasement of Palestinian demands has become the indicator of progress toward peace. Even assuming that Arab states would “lean hard” on Palestinians to accept what they have repeatedly rejected, why would an apartheid state with borders endangering Israel be in America’s interest?

Salam Fayyad, currently the favorite Palestinian of both the administration and the wider Washington establishment, has stated (at least in English) that he has no problem with Jews remaining in a Palestinian state. If so, why are the settlements an obstacle to peace? And why should impatient peace processors seek to impose a “peace agreement” by bullying Israel about them?