President Obama's impassioned defense of Palestinian statehood

Those who adhere to the ideology of rejecting Israel's right to exist might as well reject the earth beneath them and the sky above, because Israel is not going anywhere. Today, I want to tell you — particularly the young people — that so long as there is a United States of America, Ah-tem lo lah-vahd. You are not alone.

Look to a future in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians can all live in peace and greater prosperity in the Holy Land. Believe in that. Most of all look to the future that you want for your own children — a future in which a Jewish, democratic state is protected and accepted, for this time and for all time. There will be many voices that say this is not possible. But remember this: Israel is the most powerful country in this region. Israel has the unshakeable support of the most powerful country in the world. Israel is not going anywhere. Israel has the wisdom to see the world as it is, but also the courage to see the world as it should be.

The Palestinian people's right to self-determination and justice must also be recognized. Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student's ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.

This was the speech that these young Israelis not only needed but wanted to hear. A speech that radically redefined centrism in Israel, bringing it down to extraordinary common denominators in directions Israelis have learned to think of as diametrically opposed.

He spoke of security and peace as inextricably and necessarily linked, not a narrow choice between options, but a conscious choice for both…

[T]his is one way that change happens. An event like this, inspiration like this, does not in the end go to waste. It gives new strength to the world-weary and the habitually trashed. It changes momentum. It creates momentum. It does good. It makes way for better. [Haaretz]

Obama is re-framing that old issue, and his speech, as a shift away from the old debate about what Israel has to do in order to keep its state, a debate grounded in decades of war, to the conversation Obama wants to have: If the U.S. can help Israel to assume that it will keep its state, then what sort of state does it want?

The answer for Israelis, of course, is that they want a Jewish democracy. That sets up Obama to argue, as others have done, that Israel can’t be Jewish and democratic if it continues to place the Palestinians under occupation. [The Washington Post]