I think Matthew Yglesias is actually low-balling how appalling Senator Chuck Schumer‘s defense of “strangling Gaza” economically with a blockade is. Yglesias writes, “In contrast to his proposed remedies, Schumer’s critique of Hamas policy is sound.” I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. This is an excerpt of what Schumer said:
“The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Torah, in David, in a Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not.
Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel is indeed a very serious problem. But is it really a requirement for peace that the Palestinian people “believe in the Torah, in David?” If Hamas or Fatah said that the only route to peace was for Israel to “believe in” the notion that there is one god and Mohammed is his prophet, Schumer would consider them extremist lunatics.
Moreover, as Gregg Carlstrom writes, Schumer is simply wrong about Palestinian rejectionism — a majority of Palestians support a two-state solution, although that support is declining, in part because of the blockade. Furthermore, the blockade isn’t really hurting Hamas, but to the extent that the blockade is convincing Gazans that Hamas is “not the way to go,” it is, according to former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, empowering “the extreme jihadists sympathetic to al-Qaeda.”
So aside from the fact that Schumer’s standards for ending the blockade seem somewhat impossible for Palestinians to meet since they would require Palestians to abandon their own religious beliefs for Schumer’s, they’re also doing the opposite of what he wants them to do, which is eroding support for a two-state solution while giving strength to extremists even worse than Hamas. This is part of a general theme when it comes to terrorism-related issues, which is that we spend far too much time trying to punish our enemies instead of figuring out what we want and what the best way is to get it.
— A. Serwer
