Brooks: Progressives Abandoned Two-State Solution for ‘From the River to the Sea’

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has taken a “from the river to the sea” position on Israel that completely abandons a two-state solution in favor of a vague one-state solution.

Brooks said, “I think the big story here is that there’s been a rupture between liberals and progressives. And so, if you look at Joe Biden, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, people you would call liberals, they argue that, listen, we’ve had ceasefires. We’ve had multiple ceasefires with Hamas, and every time, they use the ceasefire as an excuse to rearm and reload, and then they break the ceasefire and you get more and more bloodshed. And so, the argument they make is, we can’t go through this ceasefire rhythm over and over and over again. We just have to solve the problem. The old strategy was just failing, and so that’s their case.”

He continued, “And then, more on the progressive side, they’ve shifted and adopted a policy, which has not been the traditional Democratic policy of, more or less, one state. ‘From the river to the sea’ is what gets chanted. And so, it’s not clear to me what they think that one state looks like, but it’s clearly not the traditional policy we associate with the Democratic Party, which has been very supportive of Israel. And I think it’s not only on the Middle East. On a bunch of other issues, you’re seeing this beginning — this rupture between progressives, who tend to be younger, and liberals, who tend to be older. And we’re seeing it in spades in the case of Israel-Gaza policy.”

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