“If you take a regional approach,” [Antony Blinken] told Friedman, “and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years, and what has heretofore been its single biggest concern in terms of security, Iran, is suddenly isolated along with its proxies, and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.”

Pierce through the bureaucratic lingo, and you encounter a statement breathtaking in its unseriousness. In a world filled with crises, the U.S. secretary of state has decided to resume a generations-long quest for the diplomatic Holy Grail: a Palestinian state. Governed by whom? His answer is a “stronger, reformed Palestinian Authority that can more effectively deliver for its own people.”

Where will that come from? Jupiter?

[From the imaginations of Blinken and Biden. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter tried this too, only to be stabbed in the back by maximalist Palestinians, then led by Yasser Arafat. As I write today in a post that just went up on the main blog, a two-state solution will only work when the Palestinians accept that Israel will remain as it is now and that a Palestinian state will not go “from the river to the sea.” — Ed]