Monty Python's the Meaning of Life

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Timothy Stanley: There is a certain powerful logic to the idea that Israel, as we know it, simply cannot coexist with the relentless continuation and expansion of settlements in contravention of international law. I will now devote my remaining remarks to those who not familiar with Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Imagine there is a triangle made up of three sides of the basic choices that Israel faces. Just one more weifer-thin outpost, just a little e1. Thank you very much, Tim.

Patriacide. Nationcide. Whatever you want to call it, that is what Israel is doing with its settlement policy: it is killing itself. If ever greater numbers of Jewish settlers are installed on land regarded by Palestinians as the basis for a state of their own, the possibility of a two-state solution grows ever more remote. Yet the single state alternative, involving annexation of the West Bank, would result in a country where Arabs vastly outnumber Jews and then you won’t have a one-state or a two-state solution: you’ll have a no-state solution. For those who love Israel and wish to preserve a democratic Jewish homeland, as much as for those who hate it, the settlements must stop. That’s what many left-wing Israelis and their friends say. But defenders of the settlements see things very differently. The two-state solution has long been a dead letter in their view: why stop building settlements in the name of a peace plan that is frankly unattainable? Whatever the eventual solution – it could even be a...

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