Saturday, November 28, 2009

Blaming the Americans

The NY Times has an editorial complaining the Obama and his team have bungled the Israeli-Palestinian "Peace Process":

Nine months later, the president’s promising peace initiative has unraveled.

The Israelis have refused to stop all building. The Palestinians say that they won’t talk to the Israelis until they do, and President Mahmoud Abbas is so despondent he has threatened to quit. Arab states are refusing to do anything.

Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in Israel is 4 percent) that serious negotiations may be farther off than ever. . . .

Most important, they allowed the controversy to obscure the real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks.
Peace talks that will accomplish exactly what? Let's see, we can convene the two sides around a table somewhere so the Israelis can offer the Palestinians a pseudo-state with no military, no control of its borders, and no airport in Gaza and maybe half of the West Bank, in return for recognition that everything else will be permanently part of Israel. The Palestinian authority, which doesn't represent even half the Palestinians, will counter that they want a full nation in all of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the right of any Palestinian who wants to to return to his or her pre-1947 home. What does anyone think will come of that? Even if some future Israeli government accepted those terms, how would they evict the Settlers when units of their own army have already said they won't do it?

Until people want peace and are willing to sacrifice something to get it, there is nothing to talk about. I have said before and will repeat again that I don't believe this conflict will end in my lifetime. The only things that might be accomplished in talks would be to find some ways to make the lives of Palestinians easier.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Too right. I'm actually rather mystified as to what they think Obama should be doing, unless they're just looking for a more magnificent failure. They proclaim that "stalemate is unsustainable," but like you I suspect that both sides can sustain the current standoff more or less indefinitely.