Amid accusations from Venezuela of piracy, US lawmakers have moved to bring back privateers, authorised by government-issued letters of marque, to ply the trade of piracy in service of their country by targeting enemy ships.
The Washington Post, 19 December 2025

This story does not relate to Bob Dylan’s cryptic and nihilistic Señor (Tales of Yankee Power), from Street Legal (1978). As for the meaning of his song, well, that’s pretty hard to fathom. A cowboy fever dream, perhaps; one of those strange illusions you channel in the early morning between sleeping and waking, more about mood than meaning.

Rather, these tales refer to the United States’ troubled and troublesome historical and contemporary relationship with its Central and Latin American neighbours – and particularly, to its current crusade against Venezuela’s autocratic president Nicolás Maduro. And it is less about Venezuela than about the US itself – an empire in all but name struggling to recover its own reflection in the shifting mirror of history. The restless ghost of Manifest Destiny is still pacing the corridors of the West Wing and the State Department. The “tales of Yankee power” keep repeating because the empire cannot imagine itself without them. Each show of force, each threat of “covert operations” is a reassurance ritual, a way of proving that the old muscles still work. But as with all empires in decline, the performance reveals more fragility than strength. The Monroe Doctrine once kept others out; the Neo-Monroe Doctrine may exist only to convince America that it is still in.

In That Howling Infinite has walked this road before in a 2017 post also entitled Tales of Yankee Power, a feature on American songwriter Jackson Browne‘s1986 album Lives in the Balance. At the time critics reckoned that its contemporary content, the USA’s bloody meddling in Central America, limited its appeal and long-term significance. And yet, here in the early twentieth first century, where the wars of the Arab Dissolution dragged the world into its vortex, and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ended seventy five years of Pax Europa, the Great Power politics and proxy wars that taxed intellectual and actual imaginations in that seemingly distant decade jump back into the frame like some dystopian jack in the box.

Eight years after the original Tales of Yankee Power, the story hasn’t ended – it’s simply changed key. The Uncle Sam is still abroad, still restless, still convinced the hemisphere cannot manage without his supervision. Only the script has been updated: what was once called the Monroe Doctrine is now “neo”; what was once the “war on communism” is now the “war on drugs”. But the music is familiar – and derivative: in this sad world, whenever Uncle Sam (or Comrade Ivan for that matter) plays his hand, something wicked this ways comes. As Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn, who also condemned the North’s intervention in the politics of the South once sang, “Little spots on the horizon into gunboats grow … Whatever’s coming, there’s no place else to go, waiting for the moon to show”.

People with only a passing acquaintance with Latin American history and politics have been asking, with genuine puzzlement, “why Venezuela? And why now?” The question is reasonable enough, but the coverage has been thin – particularly here in Australia – where Venezuela tends to appear only as a shorthand for failure or excess, rarely as a site of serious American political investment.

So, as the history of US intervention in Latin America repeats itself – or rhymes, if that is the more appropriate adage – I asked Chat GPT to rummage through the copious commentary to shed some light on why, with so much else on its “to do” list, America is dedicating so much energy, military resources, credibility and prestige on a defiant caudillo and his ostensibly floundering state. It is followed by a précis of an illuminating article by American journalist John Masko analysing President Donald Trump’s options. [We have featured Masko’s work in a recent post, Tales of Yankee Power … at play in America’s backyard]

Have we see this film before? 

There is a temptation to see Washington’s renewed fixation on Venezuela as an anachronism, a Cold War reflex kicking in long after the war itself has dissolved into history’s sediment. Oil state, socialist autocracy, US sanctions, ritual denunciations of imperialism – surely we have seen this film before. And yet the timing matters. Not because Venezuela has suddenly changed, but because the world around it has.

For much of the past decade, Venezuela functioned as a kind of geopolitical ghost ship: visibly derelict, drifting just offshore, but no longer worth the trouble of boarding. Sanctions were imposed, statements were made, opposition leaders were anointed and then quietly forgotten. The regime endured, hollowed out but intact, while Washington’s attention migrated—to China, to Russia, to pandemics, to its own increasingly operatic domestic divisions.

What has changed is not Venezuela’s internal character so much as its external usefulness.

Start with the most prosaic explanation, the one policymakers prefer not to dwell on too explicitly: oil. Venezuela still sits atop the world’s largest proven reserves, a geological fact that stubbornly resists ideology. Years of mismanagement and sanctions have reduced production to a shadow of its former self, but the resource remains—latent, tempting, strategically inconvenient to ignore. In a world of supply shocks, Middle Eastern volatility, war in Ukraine, and a climate transition that talks green while still burning black, Washington has rediscovered the value of optionality. Not Venezuelan oil tomorrow, necessarily—but the capacity to influence when and how it might re-enter global markets.

But oil alone does not explain the renewed urgency. Venezuela has also become a symbolic problem—what might be called an authoritarian laboratory. It is a case study in regime survival under pressure: an illiberal state that absorbed sanctions, repression, diplomatic isolation, and international scolding, and still remained standing. Worse, it did so while cultivating alternative patrons—Russia, China, Iran—demonstrating that US pressure is no longer the decisive force it once imagined itself to be.

Left alone, Venezuela risks becoming precedent. A proof that sanctions can be endured, elections ritualised, opposition fragmented, and time allowed to do the rest. For an American foreign policy establishment already uneasy about its diminishing leverage, this is not an abstract concern. It cuts to the credibility of pressure itself.

Then there is migration, the most human—and politically combustible—dimension of the crisis. More than seven million Venezuelans have left their country, destabilising neighbours and feeding directly into US domestic politics. This is not simply a humanitarian tragedy; it is a hemispheric systems failure. From Washington’s vantage point, doing nothing is no longer neutral. Containment is expensive, intervention risky, abandonment costlier still.

And so we arrive at the question of timing. Why now?

Because Washington senses a narrow corridor. Maduro’s regime is weaker than it pretends but stronger than its critics admit. The opposition remains fractured but not extinguished. Sanctions relief, once treated as a moral hazard, has become a bargaining chip. And crucially, the US is acting before its own political calendar—always the hidden metronome of foreign policy—renders incremental diplomacy impossible. With another Trump presidency no longer unthinkable, subtlety has a sell-by date.

What the US is not doing, despite the familiar rhetoric, is embarking on a grand democratic crusade. The language of democracy remains, but largely as moral scaffolding. This is not Wilsonian idealism resurrected; it is managerial realism, stripped of romance.

The objectives are modest: reinsert leverage into a frozen conflict; test whether conditional sanctions relief still works in a multipolar world; signal to rivals that the Western Hemisphere is not entirely conceded; stabilise migration flows enough to quiet domestic unrest. Pressure without invasion. Engagement without trust. Diplomacy without illusion.

And this is where the contradictions sharpen. America is attempting to discipline illiberalism abroad while its own democratic norms feel brittle, contested, and—under the shadow of political retribution, institutional erosion, and performative governance—alarmingly provisional. It is hard to export confidence when you are busy auditing your own foundations.

So what will all this effort achieve?

In the best case, a managed thaw: partial electoral concessions, incremental sanctions easing, a trickle of oil, a slight widening of political space that can be narrowed again at will. Not democracy. Not regime change. Something closer to détente.

More likely, the choreography will look familiar. Maduro gives just enough to divide his opponents. Elections occur, tilted but recognisable. Washington claims progress. The regime consolidates. Oil flows marginally. Everyone declares victory, sotto voce.

The worst case is equally familiar: talks collapse, sanctions snap back, alliances harden, migration accelerates, and US credibility erodes a little further in a region already sceptical of American patience.

Which brings us, finally, to the point that sits beneath all the policy briefings and diplomatic cables.

Long story short …

In a nutshell: the US is leaning into Venezuela now because it wants leverage over oil, migration, and a stubborn authoritarian outlier—before rivals lock it in and before domestic US politics make subtle diplomacy impossible.

What it will achieve is unlikely to be transformation: at best a managed thaw and partial stability; at worst another reminder that pressure still matters—but no longer decides outcomes.

And perhaps that, more than anything, explains the urgency. Venezuela is not just a test of Maduro. It is a test of whether American power, recalibrated and diminished, can still bend events—or whether it has entered an era where it can only nudge, negotiate, and narrate its own restraint.

Coda

In the above overview, In That Howling Infinite has provides several reasonably comprehensive explanations for what is happening today in Venezuela and the Caribbean. But what has been largely absent from this and from other discussions is the role being played by former senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio. That absence, as we shall see below,  is striking. We have endeavored to address this in a companion piece to this post entitled Marco Rubio’s Venezuelan bargain

See also in In That Howling Infinite, Tales of Yankee Power … at play in America’s backyard and the original  Tales of Yankee Power

Trump, Maduro, and the old, disgraced song sheet ..

The Chekovian principle: If there’s a gun on the wall in act 1, it has to be used in act 3, otherwise, what the point of it

Trump has to do something or his huff and puff loses all credibility.

Somewhere in the wings of world politics there hangs a theatrical maxim attributed to Chekhov: place a pistol on the wall in Act I, and someone must fire it by Act III. Americans profess to dislike theatre but cannot resist its narrative temptations; they threaten, they mobilise, they crescendo—and then, sooner or later, the audience expects the gun to go off.

Trump, a man who treats the world as a stage of which he is always the centre, has spent months pointing such a pistol at Venezuela. Warships prowled the Caribbean, threats were lobbed and withdrawn like fraternity-house dares, the Venezuelan regime was slapped with a foreign-terrorist designation—as though a label might restore the gravity of a play that has been poorly rehearsed. The horns swell, the curtains billow, and the crowd waits for the downbeat.

But Nicolás Maduro—part caudillo, part stagehand in an unraveling drama—has now done the one thing presidents hate most: he has refused to play his assigned role. He called the bluff.

When the Venezuelan National Assembly announced an investigation into an alleged American strike that killed survivors of a drug boat, it was the diplomatic equivalent of flicking Trump’s nose. It broke the Putin playbook: flattery first, deference always, never embarrass the man who believes himself the protagonist of history. Instead, Caracas stepped forward and said, in effect: All right then, fire your gun. We are still standing.

Now Trump is between a political rock and a theatrical hard place. His threats—grand, extravagant, and not altogether serious—have become a promise in the eyes of his supporters; promises demand fulfilment. To withdraw now would be humiliation. To act might mean plunging the United States back into the kind of messy, generational entanglement it claims to despise. The pistol on the mantel must discharge; the question is into what.

To parse the bind honestly, one must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth we have circled before: Venezuela is not a conventional state. It is a patchwork of criminal enclaves, guerrilla zones, mining fiefdoms, and military mafias stitched together by a government whose stability rests not on legitimacy but on shared complicity. Maduro presides not over a functioning bureaucracy but over a mutually-assured-corruption pact. The US demanding Maduro “stop the cartels” is akin to demanding a puppet cut its own strings.

Washington keeps treating narcotrafficking as a moral and strategic emergency demanding muscular intervention, and yet refuses the more awkward truth that demand originates north of the Río Grande. The US keeps trying to prune the branches while fertilising the roots. Eliminate a distribution node and another will spring up; curb the supply and the addiction of demand remains. This is the farce of policies sold as decisive: a clean narrative for messy problems.

That narrative—remove the strongman, restore democracy—does not fit a country that is less a dictatorship than a tangled criminal archipelago. The first domino in Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine refuses to topple. And worse: Washington is discovering that its preferred script cannot accommodate a terrain where power is exercised not by state capacity but by patronage, graft, and predation.

So what can Washington do? Masko’s menu of options—attacks on cartels, direct strikes on the regime, or covert coups—reads like a particularly bad buffet of imperial choices. Each invites familiar Latin American déjà vu: civil war, occupation, an opposition that cannot govern, and long occupations in which American “advisers” proliferate like mushrooms after rain. US policy keeps writing cheques reality cannot cash. Threats become commitments; commitments become entanglements; entanglements become “forever wars.”

If Trump escalates, Venezuela risks becoming another chapter in that long, wearying book the US pretends not to have read—even though it wrote half the pages. If he backs down, the political cost is immediate: the performance of American hemispheric resolve collapses into farce. The Monroe Doctrine reboot—portrayed as a return to muscular Rooseveltian policing—becomes a punchline when the first test proves a stubborn, shabby caudillo.

There is another uglier truth hidden in the theatre lights: Maduro’s survival is not proof of ideological victory but of practical, transactional survival. He has kept his inner circle bound to him through graft and opportunity; he has turned state instruments into instruments of private enrichment. That sort of stability looks like power because it is durable; but it is hollow, brittle, and violent. You cannot negotiate with a manager of vice the way you negotiate with a functioning state.

Trump staged a drama that now requires a climax, but the stage is rotten and the actors are improvising. The US treats Latin America like a backyard it keeps tripping over, never the garden it accidentally poisoned. Year after year Washington dramatises crises and expects tidy resolutions. Every generation invents a new justification—communism, terror, narco-terror—but the habit remains: pressure, coercion, intervention, regret.

The tragedy—ancient, predictable, almost Greek—is that Latin America again becomes the terrain on which American narratives are tested and American credibility measured, rather than a set of societies whose own tragedies and complexities deserve to be understood on their own terms. The region is treated as a proving ground for policy theater rather than a neighbour with histories, grievances and real human costs.

What should be done? Not much in the way of heroics. Policy that pretends to be theatre is precisely the policy that will go wrong fastest. If the United States truly seeks to reduce drug flows and migration, it must look at demand; it must reckon with domestic consumption patterns, with financial flows that launder proceeds northwards, with the geopolitics of trade and sanction that hollow out legal economies. Most of all, it must stop pretending that the remedy lies in a staged intervention that will neither eliminate the cartels nor restore democratic governance.

But the theatre will have its denouement whichever path is chosen. If the gun is fired, the consequences will echo for years in the hemisphere and in the lives of migrants and refugees. If it is not, the spectacle of American impotence will redraft the calculus of rivals and allies alike.

Either way, Venezuela will feel the impact long after the curtain falls. And the United States, which keeps writing checks the world will not conveniently cash, will be left to explain why a pistol on the mantel was ever thought a suitable prop for foreign policy.

https://unherd.com/2025/12/maduro-has-called-trumps-bluff/

Tales of Yankee Power … at play in America’s backyard

An estimated death toll is difficult to determine. In those dark days, people simply disappeared, and the NKVD (the precursor to the KGB and present day FSI) covered its tracks well. The official number for the “Great Purge” of 1936-38, or “the Yezhovchina”, named for Victor Yezhov, head of the NKVD and Stalin’s lord high executioner, stands at 1,548,366 detained persons, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day. Various historians claim that the real number of victims could be twice as much.

But the the arrests, executions, and deportations commenced as early as 1930 and continued right up until Stalin’s death in 1953. Conquest, in his The Great Terror: A Reassessment does the gloomy math: 1930-36, 7 million; 1937-1938, 3 million; 1039-53, 10 million. The number of deaths in the Soviet Union that were explicitly ordered by someone – in other words, the number of executions – is actually relatively low at around 1.5 million. The majority of the deaths were caused by neglect or repressive policies – for example, those who died in the Soviet gulags, those who died while being deported, and German civilians and Prisoners of War are believed to have perished while under Soviet guard. The numbers who were transported, exiled, displaced, and scattered to concentration camps or far-eastern towns and villages were likewise incalculable.

I use ChatGPT daily. Probably too much. I oscillate between awe and unease – between marvel at the eloquence of the machine and a wary recognition of the echo chamber it builds around us. Artificial Intelligence, so-called, is a conjuring trick of extraordinary scale: it digests the collective work of humankind and speaks it back to us, a mirror that flatters, distorts, and occasionally reveals.

When one has a blind spot – in the retina or the soul – the brain fills in the missing detail from instinct or memory. That is the magic, or the peril, of AI: it hallucinates our absences. When the data runs out, it dreams; when we falter, it improvises. It’s not so different from us, except that we invented it to remind us of ourselves.

Yet the paradox persists. The chatbot depends upon the very content it displaces. It feeds upon the living imagination even as it threatens to automate it. The web economy, once a marketplace of minds, now trembles under the weight of its own reflection. The abyss, as Nietzsche warned, is a slow and patient gazer. Look too long into the algorithm, and you may find the algorithm looking back — articulate, deferential, and strangely familiar.

Still, I keep asking questions. Perhaps because I suspect that in its confabulations lie our own. Perhaps because every hallucination hides a truth we have forgotten. Or perhaps simply because, as writers and readers, we cannot resist the shimmer of the mirror, even when we know the mirror is also a mask.

AI and the Future of the Web: Between Convenience and Curiosity

As ChatGPT and its rivals reshape the internet, the real threat is not the loss of information, but the erosion of inquiry itself.

On 5 October 2025, The Economist published an article titled “AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?” The piece argued that the rise of AI chatbots is undermining the economic and cultural foundations of the internet, threatening the very ecosystem that sustains journalism, creative work, and niche content. This essay reflects on the article’s warnings, exploring not only the economic and structural consequences of generative AI but also its broader cultural implications — and, ironically, the ways in which deliberate, interrogative engagement with AI can preserve the curiosity the article fears is vanishing.

The rise of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT is reshaping the internet’s economic and cultural ecosystem. For decades, the web operated on a delicate bargain: users accessed information and entertainment for free, while content creators and platforms monetized that attention via advertising or data collection. This system sustained journalism, creative industries, and countless niche websites. Now, AI threatens to unravel it. Chatbots can answer questions, summarize articles, and generate content with increasing sophistication, often without sending users to the original sites. Traffic – and revenue – flows away from the websites that produced the material in the first place.

The implications are far-reaching. If content creators cannot earn a living, the diversity and quality of material on the web could decline sharply. Specialized journalism, independent blogs, and even large media outlets might struggle to survive if audiences bypass them in favor of AI-generated summaries. This is not just a financial issue, but a cultural one: the internet’s richness relies on a wide ecosystem of creators, whose incentive to contribute diminishes when AI intermediates access to their work.

The piece examines potential remedies but casts doubt on any quick fix. Subscription models might help, though they risk fragmenting the web and excluding users who cannot pay. Legal or regulatory approaches — requiring AI to cite sources or compensate content creators — face practical and global coordination challenges. Revenue-sharing between AI developers and content producers remains largely theoretical. The Economist concludes that while AI offers enormous utility, it may simultaneously hollow out the ecosystem that makes the web vibrant, informative, and sustainable. In other words, the very tool designed to amplify access to information could starve the sources of that information, threatening the web’s long-term health.

Beyond the economic threat lies a deeper cultural shift. By mediating access to knowledge, AI risks centralizing authority over information in the hands of a few large platforms. Where users once navigated a decentralized web — from blogs to academic repositories – AI now acts as a single gateway, subtly shaping what people see and how it is framed. This raises questions of epistemic diversity: whose knowledge is amplified, whose is marginalized, and how errors or biases propagate when AI interprets the web.

Generative AI also encourages a culture of consumption over engagement. Users increasingly rely on synthesized answers rather than visiting original sources, participating in discussions, or evaluating evidence themselves. Over time, this could erode critical thinking, reduce exposure to divergent viewpoints, and reinforce algorithmic echo chambers. AI promises unprecedented access to information, yet by centralizing authority, it may shrink the very informational ecosystem it draws upon.

Importantly, this is no longer a speculative threat. AI is not poised to take over content creation — it has already arrived. Large language models are actively writing text, generating articles, essays, and summaries at scale. Meanwhile, readers are already turning to chatbots to précis, distill, or interpret that very material. The paradox is immediate and self-referential: the AI produces the text, and the AI digests it, while humans step in chiefly to interrogate, verify, and contextualize. In this recursive loop, the risk of distortion compounds, especially when hallucinations – the machine’s way of filling gaps in knowledge – are left unexamined.

A particular dimension of this phenomenon lies in how AI generates those hallucinations. These arise because the AI depends entirely on human-generated content to construct its answers. When gaps, biases, or missing information appear, the model must invent plausible-seeming outputs. An apt analogy comes from human vision: when someone has a blind spot or an obstruction in the retina or optic nerve, the brain instinctively fills in the missing details, drawing on memory, context, or subconscious “magic” to create a coherent image. Similarly, when a language model encounters missing content, it fills the gap, generating answers that seem authoritative but may not reflect reality. The AI, like the brain filling a visual blind spot, is striving for completeness, yet it can mislead if we do not interrogate its outputs. The lesson is clear: just as we know the eye can be tricked, so must we question AI’s “sight,” balancing reliance with critical vigilance.

Yet the irony is striking: engaging with AI is also the way to test its warning. To question AI is still to use it; to précis is still to probe. When used dialogically – as a partner in thought rather than a vending machine — AI can revive the exploratory spirit it threatens. What the Economist calls “the death of the web” might instead be its metamorphosis: a shift from a sprawl of pages to a lattice of conversations, provided users insist on curiosity over convenience, interrogation over automation.

Ironically, reading this warning through AI embodies exactly the behaviour the article fears might disappear. But here lies the distinction: using AI as a tool for interrogation, not substitution. By asking follow-up questions, seeking all sides of an argument, and qualifying answers, one preserves the habits of critical thinking and active engagement. AI becomes an interactive partner, prompting reflection rather than replacing it. Preservation of curiosity — and the web’s intellectual richness — depends not on abstaining from AI, but on using it with vigilance, discernment, and a willingness to probe deeper than the first answer it provides.

Viewed this way, AI may not spell the end of the web but its transformation. The sprawling landscape of pages may evolve into a lattice of conversations, mediated by intelligent systems but animated by human questions, scepticism, and moral reflection. Survival of the web depends on whether users insist on curiosity over convenience, engagement over automation. It depends on whether we continue to ask: Where did this knowledge come from? Who benefits from its presentation? What has been omitted? Machines can synthesize words, but they cannot yet replicate the moral and intellectual labour of wondering why those words matter.

In short, the web will not die at the hands of AI; it will die only if its users stop thinking. The technology challenges us, but it also offers an opportunity: to transform passive consumption into deliberate inquiry, to turn a warning into a call to action, and to ensure that curiosity remains the lifeblood of the digital commons. The threat is not the web itself, but the spirit of engagement that makes it meaningful. By interrogating, questioning, and balancing – and by understanding the limits of AI’s “vision” – we preserve that spirit, demonstrating that the human capacity for reflection remains, for now, irreducible.

Coda

And so the circle closes: the machine writes, the reader queries, the machine replies, and the reader wonders whether the wondering itself has been automated. Perhaps this is what Voltaire foresaw in jest – that if the truth does not exist, we will simply have to invent it – though he could hardly have imagined silicon doing the inventing. Yet invention, in all its ambiguity, remains a human art: the ability to doubt, to test, to laugh at the illusion even as we depend upon it. The web may flicker, morph, or narrow beneath the weight of automation, but the act of questioning – that restless, unprogrammable impulse – is what keeps it alive. If AI fills the blind spots, it is still up to us to notice the seams. And perhaps that is where the future of thought now resides: not in what the machine can see, but in what we still suspect it cannot.

This siege will endure until the besiegers
feel like the besieged
that anger is an emotion like any other …

This siege will endure until we are truly persuaded
into choosing a harmless slavery, but
in total freedom! …

This siege will endure
till the gods on Olympus
rewrite the Iliad.

From State of Siege (Halat Hisar), Mahmoud Darwish
(written during the siege of Ramallah during the a second Intifada)

Palestinian protesters wave Palestinian flags as Israelis carrying Israeli flags walk past in front of the Damascus Gate on  Jerusalem Day May 8, 2013.

The recognition of a Palestinian state by France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Belgium, and several other Western governments – formally declared during last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York – represents one of the most dramatic diplomatic shifts in the century-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict. For decades, these countries insisted that recognition should only follow a negotiated settlement; now, frustrated by years of deadlock and the devastation of Israel’s war in Gaza, they have acted first, framing their decisions as a last-ditch effort to keep the two-state solution alive. The UN gathering produced an unusually forceful declaration – backed by 142 states – calling for a Gaza ceasefire, the release of Israeli hostages, the disarmament and exclusion of Hamas from governance, and the revival of a political process to end the conflict. Western leaders presented recognition as both a moral imperative and a strategic gambit, an attempt to restore international credibility and reassert that partition remains the only viable path to peace.

Yet this surge of recognition comes at a moment when the two-state vision appears more remote than ever. Polls show declining public support among both Israelis and Palestinians, while settlement expansion, political radicalisation, and Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza have driven trust to historic lows. Politicians who once championed peace through partition have lost influence, replaced by hardliners on both sides. What was once a widely shared aspiration now looks to many like a vanishing mirage, sustained more by international declarations than by political will in Jerusalem or Ramallah.

Reactions have been immediate and polarising. Israel and the United States condemned the move, warning it rewards Hamas and undermines direct negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed retaliatory measures, including possible annexation of West Bank territory, while Washington reiterated that Palestinian statehood must come only through talks with Israel. In mainstream outlets, editorials split sharply: European newspapers hailed a “historic corrective,” while Israeli and American commentators decried a dangerous precedent. On social media the divide was even starker—Palestinian activists celebrated a long-awaited acknowledgment of their national rights, while Israeli supporters accused the recognising states of legitimising terror. For all the headlines, however, the recognition remains more a statement of intent than a change in reality, arriving as trust between Israelis and Palestinians sinks to historic lows and settlement expansion continues to make a viable Palestinian state harder to imagine.

Under current circumstances, a fully functioning Palestinian state remains highly unlikely. Recognition by Western governments is largely symbolic, intended to signal international support for Palestinian sovereignty and to pressure Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) toward a political settlement. Yet symbolism alone cannot overcome the deep structural, political, and demographic barriers that make the two-state solution increasingly remote.

On the Israeli side, settlement expansion, military control of the West Bank, and political resistance to Palestinian sovereignty—including outright annexation proposals—have steadily eroded the territorial and administrative conditions for a viable state. On the Palestinian side, political fragmentation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza undermines unified governance, while internal challenges like corruption, weak institutions, and social unrest limit the PA’s capacity to meet the benchmarks Western nations have set for recognition.

Moreover, public support for partition is dwindling. Recent polls show that only a minority of Israelis and Palestinians believe two states are feasible, and many consider the idea politically dead. Without a major shift—whether through renewed negotiations, dramatic political reform, or outside pressure strong enough to alter incentives—recognition will remain largely symbolic, and a functioning Palestinian state may exist only as a legal or diplomatic concept, not a lived reality.

In short, while international recognition keeps the idea of Palestinian sovereignty alive and serves as a moral and political signal, the practical hurdles remain immense, and the prospect of a fully independent, self-governing Palestinian state in the near future is extremely uncertain.

The question in the title of this post reflects, therefore, deep pessimism about the trajectory of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Whether it proves true depends on historical choices, demographic pressures, and international leverage. Some key questions – about past rejections, public opinion, and the viability of alternative models – may help clarify the issue.

Banksy on The Wall. Qalandia Checkpoint. Paul Hemphill 2016

Introduction

We have put up many flags,
They have put up many flags.
To make us think that they’re happy.
To make them think that we’re happy.
Yehuda Amichai, Jerusalem (1967)

The question of Palestinian statehood has long been a central, yet persistently unresolved, issue in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Despite decades of negotiations, UN resolutions, and international advocacy, the prospect of an independent and contiguous Palestinian state remains increasingly uncertain. Recent polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) underscores this pessimism, revealing declining Palestinian confidence in the viability of a two-state solution, alongside growing, if limited, support for alternative arrangements such as a one-state framework. On the Israeli side, public opinion and political realities similarly constrain the feasibility of a negotiated two-state outcome.

This essay examines why Palestinian statehood has repeatedly stalled by tracing historical rejections, exploring the political calculus of Israeli governments, and analyzing the attitudes of the populations most directly affected. It further situates these trends within broader debates over one-state solutions, contrasting the visions advanced by Islamist movements with those advocated by external pro-Palestinian activists. Finally, it considers whether international actors possess the capacity to impose a two-state settlement—or whether the region is moving inexorably toward a de facto one-state reality. By integrating historical, political, and sociological perspectives, this essay interrogates the enduring question: Will there ever be a Palestinian state?

How many times have Palestinians rejected a two-state plan and why?

It depends on what you count as “Palestinian” and what you count as a “plan.” If you include rejections by Arab leadership that represented Palestinians, there are several high-visibility rejections: 1937 (Peel Commission), 1947 (UN Partition), and repeated rejections of negotiated offers since 1948 at moments when Arab/Pan-Arab leadership or Palestinian negotiators declined particular proposals. In the post-Oslo era, the most often-cited episodes are 2000 (Camp David), 2001 (Taba talks continuation), 2008 (Olmert-Abbas negotiations), and 2014 (Kerry process/Framework). Each episode is complex; brief summaries and why each side says “no” follow.

Major moments commonly cited as Palestinian rejections

1. 1937 — Peel Commission partition
   • Who: Arab leadership in Palestine (not a unified Palestinian state actor).
   • Why rejected: Partition into a small Jewish state and much larger Arab state was unacceptable to Arab leaders who opposed ceding any part of Palestine to Zionism; nationalist rejection of foreign partition and the loss of Arab majority claims.
2. 1947 — UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181, 29 Nov 1947)
   • Who: Palestinian Arab leadership and Arab states (the Palestinian national leadership at that time did not accept the plan).
   • Why rejected: Arabs objected to partitioning what they considered an indivisible homeland and to giving a Jewish state sovereignty on a significant portion of territory despite Jews being a demographic minority overall; they also rejected the principle of partition imposed by an international body without their consent.
3. 1960s–1970s — Various Arab/Palestinian rejections of recognition/compromise proposals
   • The PLO until the late 1980s largely rejected any acceptance of Israel’s right to exist; that changed with the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence and recognition of UN resolutions by the PLO leadership.
4. 2000 — Camp David / Clinton parameters (June–July 2000)
   • Who: Yasser Arafat / Palestinian Authority.
   • Why contested: Israeli PM Ehud Barak (and Clinton afterward) contend that Arafat rejected a generous territorial offer; Palestinians argue the offer fell far short on key issues (East Jerusalem — sovereignty over Haram/Al-Aqsa, control of borders and refugees, the territorial contiguity and viability of a state, and security arrangements) and that the proposal was either vague or unacceptable. Historians disagree on whether a “final offer” was made and whether it would have satisfied minimal Palestinian demands.
5. 2001 — Taba talks (January 2001)
   • The Taba talks were a continuation and some considered them the closest both sides got; no agreement was reached. Palestinians argue that Taba showed convergence on several issues but the Israeli election and political changes interrupted progress.
6. 2008 — Olmert-Abbas negotiations
   • Israeli PM Ehud Olmert reportedly offered (per Israeli and some Western accounts) withdrawal from about 92–94% of the West Bank plus land swaps and shared sovereignty arrangements in parts of East Jerusalem. Mahmoud Abbas did not accept a final text. Abbas’s camp argued the offer’s details, implementation guarantees, refugee return limitations, and settlement blocs left core Palestinian demands unmet. There is no published final offer; discussions again are disputed.
7. 2014 — Kerry framework and subsequent collapse
   • Palestinians declined to extend negotiations without a settlement freeze and other conditions; Palestinians viewed the framework as biased and insufficient on refugees and Jerusalem.

Why these rejections happened

• Substance: Many Palestinian leaders judged concrete offers to be inadequate on core issues: sovereignty in East Jerusalem (temple/mosque precincts), Palestinian refugees’ right of return, borders and territorial contiguity, and control of airspace/borders/security.
• Political calculus: Domestic politics (fear of being seen as conceding rights), weak bargaining positions, and absence of credible enforcement/implementation guarantees made leaders reluctant to sign.
• Distrust: Deep distrust of Israeli commitments, Israeli settlement expansion during negotiations, and lack of effective international enforcement or credible security guarantees.
• Representativeness: At times Palestinian negotiators argued they lacked the ability to implement or guarantee an agreement (e.g., Gaza under Hamas), or that they were negotiating under duress.

Bottom line: There have been multiple moments when Palestinian leadership(s) have rejected proposals — often because the offers were judged insufficient on core national issues or because of political and practical constraints. But nearly every such “rejection” is contested by the other side as either a missed opportunity or an offer that Palestinian leaders politically could not accept.

How many times has Israel rejected a two-state plan and why? 

Short answer: Israel (as a political community and through its governments) has both accepted and rejected different proposals at different times. Key moments often cited where Israeli leaders or governments rejected proposals (or did not accept international proposals) include 1937 (some Jewish leadership rejected aspects of Peel), 1947 (the Jewish Agency accepted UN Partition but some revision and fighting followed), 2000 (Palestinians argue Israel’s offers were insufficient), 2001–2008 there were Israeli governments that resisted large territorial concessions. Important Israeli rejections — and the reasons — follow.

Notable episodes where Israel or Israeli leaders declined offers or conditions for a two-state outcome

1. 1937 — Peel Commission
   • The Jewish Agency expressed conditional acceptance of partition as a basis for negotiation but was not fully satisfied; the plan’s specifics were debated.
2. 1947 — UN Partition
   • The Jewish Agency accepted partition; Arab states rejected it; Israel declared independence in the portions allocated and fought the ensuing war. (So this is not an Israeli rejection of two-state per se.)
3. Post-1967 & Camp David 2000 / Clinton parameters
   • Israeli leaders (or later Israeli governments) disputed aspects of proposed deals. At Camp David 2000, Barak’s government offered major territorial concessions by prior historical standards; Israelis argue that Palestinians rejected an extraordinary offer. Critics of Israel point out that Israeli offers conditioned Palestinian sovereignty in ways Israel could control (security) and left large settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty.
4. 2001–2009 — Ehud Barak / Ariel Sharon / Ehud Olmert periods
   • Sharon initiated the Gaza disengagement (2005) but opposed a full withdrawal from the West Bank; his government and successors resisted a full evacuation of major settlement blocs.
   • Olmert’s 2008 overtures were significant but were not ultimately accepted or codified.
5. Since ~2009 (Netanyahu era)
   • Many Israeli governments have signalled they will not accept a full withdrawal to pre-1967 lines, and have expanded settlements, hardening positions against a contiguous Palestinian state unless extreme security arrangements are guaranteed. In practice, Israeli political coalitions, especially on the right, have rejected core elements (e.g., full Palestinian sovereignty in certain areas).

Reasons for Israeli rejections or hesitations

• Security concerns: Fear that withdrawal would create a security vacuum exploited by hostile armed groups.
• Settler politics: Domestic political influence of settlers and right-wing parties opposing evacuation of settlements.
• Historical/religious claims: Parts of the political spectrum see Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as part of historic Israel.
• Political survival: Israeli leaders often face domestic political costs for major concessions; coalitions are fragile.

Bottom line: Israel’s governments have sometimes proposed or accepted frameworks for Palestinian statehood under constrained terms; other Israeli governments have rejected offers requiring large territorial concessions or uncompromising security arrangements. Like the Palestinian side, Israeli “rejections” must be read in context: offers can be partial, conditional, or politically impossible to implement domestically.

Do either  Israelis or Palestinians still want a two-state solution?

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) provides the clearest window into Palestinian opinion:

• Two-state support: Only ~28–32% of Palestinians now favor a two-state solution, down from over 50% in the mid-2000s.
• One-state with equal rights: Roughly 22–25% favor a single democratic state; this rises slightly when respondents are told two states are impossible.
• Pessimism: Over 70% believe settlement growth has killed the two-state option. A majority say armed struggle is more effective than negotiations.

Israeli surveys (Israel Democracy Institute, Pew, Tel Aviv University) show a similar downward trend, with Jewish Israeli support for two states hovering around 35–40%, but falling into the 20s among younger or right-wing voters.

Both publics are increasingly skeptical of the feasibility of two states, even if many still prefer it in principle. Broad support for the abstract idea of two states has existed among both populations at various times, but support has declined and become more conditional over the last two decades. Both Israeli and Palestinian public opinion polls show support varies widely with question wording, recent violence, perceived viability of a partner, and whether core issues (Jerusalem, refugees, settlements) are addressed.

Key patterns (up to mid-2024)

• Conditional support vs. abstract support: Many people in both societies will say they support “two states” in the abstract, but support drops when respondents are asked about painful tradeoffs (land swaps, recognition of the right of return, security concessions, evacuation of settlements). Surveys often show a gap between general approval of the concept and willingness to accept concrete sacrifices.
• Effect of violence and leadership: During periods of intense violence, support for compromise falls on both sides. Leadership statements (or rhetoric) shape public opinion.
• Younger cohorts and pessimism: Younger Palestinians, having lived under occupation or blockade longer, sometimes favour more maximalist or different solutions (including resistance). Among Israelis, security anxieties and right-wing shifts have reduced unconditional support for two states in certain segments.
• Poll organizations show divergence: Israeli pollsters (e.g., Israel Democracy Institute, Pew) and Palestinian pollsters (e.g., Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research — PCPSR) report fluctuating majorities for two states depending on question phrasing, but the overall trend over the 2010s–early 2020s was eroding confidence in the two-state model’s feasibility and in the partner’s reliability.

At times in the 1990s and early 2000s, a clear majority on both sides expressed conditional support for two states; by the 2010s and early 2020s large minorities in both societies expressed doubts or favoured alternatives. Exact percentages vary by year and question — I can pull specific polls if you want up-to-date figures.

Many Israelis and many Palestinians say, in the abstract, they prefer two states — but support is fragile, conditional, and diminished compared with earlier decades. The decline is driven by mutual distrust, settlement facts on the ground, political fragmentation, and repeated failed negotiations.

Can outsiders impose a two-state solution? If so, how?

Outsiders can influence or attempt to impose a two-state solution, but implementation without substantial local buy-in is extremely difficult and likely unstable. Historical precedents show outsiders can set up or recognize states (e.g., Kosovo, East Timor) with international backing, but those required either UN administration, the use of force, or broad international consensus — and even then they faced resistance and long consolidation phases.

Mechanisms by which outsiders might “impose” a solution

1. Diplomatic pressure and incentives
   • Major powers (U.S., EU, Arab states) can use carrots (economic aid, normalization deals, trade) and sticks (sanctions, withdrawal of support) to coerce or incentivize concessions. The Abraham Accords showed how outside actors can reshape incentives (normalization in exchange for compromise). But carrots/sticks are more effective when targeted and when the recipient has internal political capacity to implement concessions.
2. International legal/UN mechanisms
   • The UN can pass resolutions, create trusteeship or transitional administrations, or deploy peacekeepers/administrators (as in East Timor or Kosovo). For a Palestinian state, a Security Council resolution could, in theory, recognize statehood or authorize an international regime — but that requires consensus or at least absence of a veto by a permanent member.
3. Military enforcement
   • Occupation by external forces or an international enforcement presence can impose borders and security arrangements. This is politically explosive, expensive, and requires long-term commitment. Examples: NATO in Kosovo, UN forces in some post-conflict zones. Such imposition risks insurgency and long occupation costs.
4. Mass recognition and normalization
   • Rapid and widespread recognition of a Palestinian state by many countries (plus economic packages and border control mechanisms) could create facts on the ground. Recognition alone doesn’t change control of territory — but combined with sanctions or withholding of recognition from Israel for non-compliance it could shift incentives.
5. Conditional statehood linked to enforceable obligations
   • An externally brokered treaty that includes concrete verification, timelines, demilitarization, security guarantees, economic support, and enforcement mechanisms (e.g., international police, monitoring) could make implementation more feasible — but enforcement is the hard part.

Why imposing a solution is difficult in practice

• Lack of sustained international consensus: A credible imposition requires a coalition willing to act and sustain the costs. The U.S. is a key player and historically has shielded Israel from many pressures. Without U.S. backing, coercive international action is unlikely.
• Domestic politics on both sides: Israeli domestic politics, Palestinian fragmentation (Fatah vs Hamas), and other local actors can block externally imposed deals.
• Settlements and facts on the ground: Settlements, infrastructure, and demographic realities mean that any externally imposed borders would have to resolve complex property and population arrangements; uprooting settlers or re-settling people invites fierce resistance.
• Legitimacy problem: Solutions imposed from the outside without local consent lack legitimacy and are vulnerable to non-compliance, civil unrest, or insurgency.

Real-world precedents and lessons

• East Timor (1999–2002): International administration (UN transitional administration and international security) helped shepherd independence. It required decisive international intervention and long stabilization.
• Kosovo (1999–2008): NATO intervention and UN/Kosovo institutions created de facto independence later recognized by many states, but not by all — and the status remains contested.
• West Bank/Gaza: Repeated attempts at externally mediated agreements (Oslo, Madrid, Roadmap) depended on local buy-in and fell apart when trust or enforcement mechanisms failed.

Bottom line: Outsiders can create the conditions for a two-state solution or enforce aspects of it, but any durable solution requires substantial local agreement, credible enforcement mechanisms, and international willingness to bear political, economic, and — where necessary — military costs. Imposition without legitimacy is likely to fail or to produce an unstable, contested outcome.

What is the level of support for a one-state solution?

Short answer: Support for an explicitly framed one-state solution (a single binational democratic state) is a minority position among both populations overall, but it has grown as pessimism about two states increases — especially among Palestinians and among some left-leaning Israelis. Conversely, many Israelis who favour “one state” imagine it as one state with Jewish predominance or annexation with unequal rights (which Palestinians and many observers call an apartheid outcome), not a binational liberal democracy.

Patterns and nuances of a Unitary Democratic State

• Among Palestinians: As two-state prospects dim and as decades of occupation/fragmentation continue, a meaningful minority (and at times a plurality in some polls) support a single democratic state with equal rights. Support rises when polls ask about full equality and citizenship for Palestinians. But Palestinians are divided: some prefer independent statehood, others prefer a meaningful right of return, and others prefer a one-state solution that guarantees rights.
• Among Israelis: Support for a one-state democratic alternative that would likely end Jewish political majority is low among Jewish Israelis. Some Israeli Arabs and left-wing Jews are more favorable. There is also a separate current that supports de facto annexation (one political unit but with unequal rights), which many analysts call a one-state reality but not a democratic one.
• Internationally and intellectually: The one-state idea has grown as a topic in academic and activist circles, especially where two-state prospects look unviable. But it remains controversial and politically unlikely given demographics, identity politics, and political institutions.

One-state support is rising in certain segments (particularly among Palestinians frustrated with the two-state impasse and among some international activists) but remains a contested minority position overall. What people mean by “one state” varies — equal-rights binational democracy vs. annexation with inequality — and that difference matters enormously.

The Islamist Conception of One State

Movements such as Hamas envision an Islamic polity over all of historic Palestine, often framed in religious terms that deny the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

• Feasibility: Near zero. Israel would resist militarily; international actors (including most Arab states) would not back a religiously defined state achieved by force.
• Effect on negotiations: Hamas’s maximalism hardens Israeli security fears and undermines Palestinian diplomatic leverage.

External Pro-Palestinian Activists Conception of One State

A growing cohort of academics, NGOs, and diaspora activists advocate a single secular democratic state with equal rights as the only moral response to settlement entrenchment.

• Feasibility: Low. It requires Israeli Jewish consent to end the Jewish state, which current polling shows is overwhelmingly opposed.
• Strategic impact: By reframing the conflict as a civil-rights struggle rather than a territorial dispute, it increases international pressure on Israel and could shift discourse toward rights-based sanctions (as in the anti-apartheid movement).

Conclusion

The title of this essay could have been  “There will never be a Palestinian state” insofar as this captures the bleak trajectory of current policies and events: entrenched Israeli control, Palestinian political weakness, waning international leverage notwithstanding the level of international outrage and or sure in the wake of October 7 2023 and the deadly and destructive war that followed it, and the impact of this upon Israeli and Palestinian politics and public opinion.

Yet history cautions against absolutes. States have emerged from long occupations (East Timor, South Sudan), and shifting demographics or geopolitical shocks can reorder seemingly permanent realities.

But the prospect is plausible given current trends and present circumstances (settlement expansion, declining public confidence, regional normalization without a Palestinian settlement, volatile domestic politics on both sides, and an ongoing war). But it is not a historical certainty. Much depends on choices: Israeli policy (settlements, annexation or not), Palestinian unity and political strategy, international willingness to apply sustained pressure or to provide credible guarantees, and unpredictable shocks (regional deals, major political shifts, or crises) that could alter incentives.

Poll data from PCPSR confirm what political realities already suggest: belief in two states is collapsing on both sides, while alternative visions—whether Islamist or liberal democratic—remain politically unviable. Israel’s settlement expansion and right-wing coalitions make partition ever harder. Palestinian divisions and weak leadership undermine bargaining capacity. International actors lack the will or leverage to impose a settlement.

If present trends continue, a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state appears unlikely in the near term; whether that equates to never remains a political, not metaphysical, judgment. The likely “solution” is probably not a negotiated peace but a de facto one-state reality of unequal rights, whether acknowledged or not. That outcome may endure for decades, but history cautions against declaring anything permanent. Demographic change, geopolitical shocks, or transformative leadership could still open pathways that today appear closed.

Key Source: Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), Public Opinion Poll No. 90

See also, in In That Howling Infinite, Middle East Miscellany, Lebensraum Redux – Hamas’ promise of the hereafter,  Al Aqsa Flood and the Hamas holy war. Is an Israeli-Palestinian confederation possible? and Visualizing the Palestinian Return – the art of Ismail Shammout