On having a dog in the fight, or not – Alon Pinkas in Haaretz:

‘In a week where it seemed the West Bank was engulfed in a perfect storm of violence with a built-in escalatory mechanism, the United States mostly remained disinterested and standoffish.
There were the predictable platitudes from the State Department about the U.S. administration feeling “concerned,” being “troubled” by reports of settler violence and Palestinian terror, and the inevitable call for all sides to show “restraint.” These are the diplomatic equivalents of the sanctimonious, eye-rolling “thoughts and prayers” that American politicians resort to immediately after yet another in the endless chain of U.S. mass shootings.’

(…)

‘To begin with, Wednesday’s Israeli settler violence and lawlessness was not limited to the village of Turmus Ayya, near the settlement of Eli where four Israelis were murdered by Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday. It was all over the West Bank, with the Israel Defense Forces and Border Police either losing control or standing idly by.
Ironically, in last Friday’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the previous IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. (res.) Aviv Kochavi, opined that “today, the IDF has full control of Judea and Samaria.” Judging by Tuesday and Wednesday’s events, it has anything but full control of the West Bank.’

(…)

‘The convergence of these developments is a conflagration the United States “cannot ignore,” since it renders “one state” as the only plausible outcome in the region. But actually they can ignore this, and this is the daunting signal being sent.
Any escalation will reverberate and undermine the efforts the Americans are making to facilitate an upgrade in Saudi-Israeli relations, and also destabilize Jordan. Yet the United States is reluctant to project its power.
In the last decade, there has not been any significant U.S. involvement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Their last mediation efforts – then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy in 2014 – ended in a predictable and hopeless impasse, and capped almost a decade of U.S. efforts that produced virtually nothing.’

(…)

‘The United States can mumble about its “commitment to a two-state solution” all it wants, but Israeli policies and inertia are turning this into a patently unviable possibility, and the U.S. is staying silent and aloof. That should worry Israelis, not Americans.’

Read the article here.

The US is not willing to present the Middle-East to China (and Russia) on a plate but the strategic value of Israel for the US is clearly diminishing for many reasons, also domestic reasons.

Pariah states can survive and suddenly turn out to be less of a pariah (Syria) but at what cost?

Also, the settler violence is another dress rehearsal for a civil war. The IDF protecting Palestinians on a large scale will sooner or later destroy the unity of the army, which is still the main recipe for civil war. (My units will fight your units.)