LIKE Roger Cohen, I had a meeting with Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, last week. (In fact, Mr Nachman told me he'd come from Mr Cohen's office to mine.) Like Mr Cohen, I was told of Mr Nachman's "Jordanian option": divide the West Bank between Israel and Jordan, each side's salients reaching out to the major (respective) Jewish and Arab populations, interlocking "like a zipper", as Mr Nachman put it. He simply doesn't believe in any Palestinian state whatsoever. (Never mind that the Jordanians in no way want any part of the West Bank or its Palestinians.)

Is Mr Nachman crazy? He's not a member of some far-right party; he is a member of Mr Netanyahu's, Likud. Which brings up the question Mr Cohen asks. Where is Likud's heart, its centre? What does it see as Israel's vital interest? Is Mr Netanyahu, calling for a Palestinian state so shrunken and so humbled (completely demilitarised, with the IDF on its eastern border with Jordan), the left flank of Likud? With Mr Nachman, presumably, on the right? That would mean that the centre of Likud suspects even Mr Netanyahu is an Arab-appeasing softie, and everyone else—Kadima, not to mention Labour (or heaven forbid the New Movement-Meretz)—downright pro-terrorist.

If the centre of the governing party were the centre of Israel, we would be in trouble. There would be no possibility of America joining negotiations to help Israel find a workable two-state solution. Fortunately, that isn't Israel's centre. There is a huge "left", admittedly hardened by Palestinian truculence, violence and continuing anti-Semitic, Israel-deligitimising teaching in Palestinian textbooks, that nonetheless is able to see Israel's present and future for what they are, and is ready to cut a deal. Quiz for Abe Foxman: who said the recent crisis was an "insult to the institution of the presidency, which no American can forgive"? Since Mr Foxman is "shocked and stunned" by America's "gross overreaction", shouldn't the president of the Anti-Defamation League address this obvious anti-Semitic calumny? Its source is Yoel Marcus, writing in Ha'aretz.

Remembering that this is Democracy in America, not Democracy in Israel, let me close with just one wish for my fellow America-based commentators: that Americans could discuss the crisis with the same parameters and the same freedom from character assassination that Israelis can. If that were so, we might just be able to come up with ideas that America, Israel and the Palestinians could all tolerate, and make them the basis of a deal. And fortunately we know what those ideas look like, since Ehud Barak, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton got so close in their final go-round at Taba. But if the discussion in America must be so stunted that honest critics of Israel, no matter how historically Zionist (or even Jewish), spend half their time defending themselves from accusations of anti-Semitism, it's gonna be a long peace process.

Update: Speculation here and some (anonymously sourced) White House reporting here that the Obama administration might be trying to crack Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu from the Netanyahu coalition and get Kadima into it instead. That would indeed be a coalition with a centre closer to Israel's, and closer to a deal with the Palestinians, not to mention closer to American interests.