And this is better? Considering the fact that he’s not saying this in the sense of there not having been a sovereign Palestine for several decades, but that a certain people are denied existance as a people, in order to steal their land and exile/oppress them.

That’s why, on the other side, practically no one today who supports Jewish rule over Palestinians in Judea and Samaria does so on the grounds that the latter are not a nation. There are a few out-of-the-loop American supporters of Israel who are still recycling the words of Golda Meir, but it is simply not a part of the argument today, Mike Huckabee notwithstanding. You’re right that it would be relevant to an argument based on a strict Wilsonian principle of national self-determination, if anyone were making that argument. There are few if any people who would both support such a statehood argument in principle *and* say that the Zionist occupation is legitimate *if* the Palestinians don’t meet the criteria of nationhood. So in practice, the question is irrelevant.

One clarification: the point I credited to Michael Neumann wasn’t formulated exactly the way he said it in the book.

On the actual question of Palestinian nationhood, here’s one way of looking at it without getting into the mess of definitions. Suppose Judea and Samaria were annexed or otherwise joined politically to Syria, the Israeli settlers expelled, and the Palestinians granted full Syrian citizenship with a large degree of local autonomy, all this with the full consent of the Palestinian leadership. Would you really start referring to Syria as a binational state, like Belgium? Would the Palestinians themselves?

And, if we agree that Palestinian statehood is not something that we are morally obligated to support, I can’t see why it’s in our interest to do it.

And when Obama got 78% of the Jewish vote, why the GOP falls into the trap of supporting the ultras among the Zionists is beyond me. Does the dispensationalist heresy of the Plymouth Brethren have that big a following?

Whether or not one agrees that a two-state solution is the best way to go about finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Palestine, denying the idea that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories represent an actual, coherent political group with interests of their own they are pursuing with great zeal, and that outsiders to that group can impose or deny their notions of “nationhood” upon them just flies in the face of reality. Once a people decide that they represent a nation unto themselves, it’s not possible for outsiders to stop them, and efforts to do so only reinforce that internal sense of nationhood. The Jews themselves are one of the best examples of that, and Zionism is exhibit A in how that works. Pretending it’s valid for Jews, and not for Palestinians, is an exercise in the very kind of repression that has fueled the drive for Palestinian nationhood, as well as Zionism itself.

Rejecting Palestinian statehood isn’t “socially unacceptable,” nor am I interested in creating a different version of the taboos imposed by “pro-Israel” advocates. It is just phenomenally short-sighted policy, and it happens to be bad for Israel’s long-term survival. It also puts the U.S. on the side of an unjust colonial occupation against a group of people that has not actually done us any harm. If you want to defend such a bad position, you are welcome to do so.

First of all, as far as I can tell from the URLs, Huckabee didn’t use the word “nation.” He said, “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” That obviously refers to some (allegedly nonexistent) group, but it may or may not refer to nationhood, however Huckabee defines it.

Second, the concept of nationhood is famously contentious (I disagreed with Larison about it once in Takimag.com comments). Usually, arguments about whether X is really a nation are really arguments over the definition of nationhood.

Third, Larison’s claim that the denial that Palestinians are a nation “relies on” a 19th-century belief that nations are “ancient,” is obviously absurd. One can accept that nations are artificial constructs that come into being and disappear, and still deny that the Palestinians are an instance of such a nation.

One thing that’s missing is a charitable reading of Huckabee’s remark. Even assuming that he was referring to nationhood, the claim is generally that Palestinians have been and are racially, religiously, linguistically, and culturally indistinguishable from Syrians, and that the specifically Palestinian identity is newly-created (I think we all agree on that) and still superficial. That claim is not obviously false.

Finally, I’ll note that the question of Palestinian nationhood is pretty irrelevant to the whole conflict. As Michael Neumann points out in The Case Against Israel, what matters is that the Palestinians, or at least those in Judea and Samaria – whether or not they’re a nation – are ethnically distinct from the Jews, lived there before Zionist settlement began over a century ago, and reject Jewish rule. It’s also relevant that the Palestinians, whether or not they’re a nation, are a self-conscious political entity. So I think the best response to Huckabee’s claim would be, “So what?”

Btw, George Gilder has a new book out on Israel. I haven’t seen it yet, but from what I’ve heard it seems to be pretty close to the explaining the pro-Israel position from a mainstream conservative pov. Have you seen it yet?