Why Israel Must Leave The West Bank

Josh Marshall at TPM states clearly why Israel must get out of the West Bank for the sake of its own survival as a democratic country. Although I quote two significant paragraphs, please read the entire article. To me, Marshall makes very good sense.

Let's's be clear what that means: a country that permanently holds territories with residents who lack citizenship, the vote and many of the rights of the citizens of the country in question. You can throw around inflammatory words like 'apartheid' which I don't think is appropriate or apt because of the very different origins of the two situations. But it strikes me as naive to believe that such a situation can be maintained permanently without growing international pressure and isolation that will strangle the country.

What this logic tells me is that getting out of the West Bank isn't a prize to be exchanged for peace if and when you can find a leader on the Palestinian side who you have perfect trust in. Getting out of the West Bank is quite simply necessary to the survival of Israel as a Jewish state. So ideally you get out in exchange for a durable peace. And you try to do it in the smartest and most orderly manner. But you get out regardless. And realizing the necessity of leaving means, at a minimum, as a first step, stopping doing things that make it harder, perhaps nearly impossible, to leave. And the first thing on that list is continuing to build new settlements and infrastructure which creates a growing constituency to stay in the settlements forever.