Peace vs. the 'peace process' -Jeff Jacoby
Obama was right when he said there had been no progress toward Arab-Israeli peace under Bush. Nor had there been any under Clinton. Nor will there be any under Obama.
Why? Because the "peace process" to which all of them, their sharp differences notwithstanding, have been so committed, is not a formula for ending the decades-long war in the Holy Land, but for prolonging it.
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands at the White House in September 1993, launching the Oslo "peace process." What resulted was not peace but an intensified war.
Arafat called [then President Bill] Clinton in January 2001 to tell him what a great man he was, Clinton was bitter. "I am not a great man," he told Arafat. "I am a failure, and you have made me one."
Diplomacy cannot settle the Arab-Israeli conflict until the Palestinians abandon their anti-Israel rejectionism. US policy should be focused on getting them to abandon it. The Palestinians must be put on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel.
Until then -- no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons."
[The Boston Globe]
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Obama was right when he said there had been no progress toward Arab-Israeli peace under Bush. Nor had there been any under Clinton. Nor will there be any under Obama.
Why? Because the "peace process" to which all of them, their sharp differences notwithstanding, have been so committed, is not a formula for ending the decades-long war in the Holy Land, but for prolonging it.
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands at the White House in September 1993, launching the Oslo "peace process." What resulted was not peace but an intensified war.
Arafat called [then President Bill] Clinton in January 2001 to tell him what a great man he was, Clinton was bitter. "I am not a great man," he told Arafat. "I am a failure, and you have made me one."
Diplomacy cannot settle the Arab-Israeli conflict until the Palestinians abandon their anti-Israel rejectionism. US policy should be focused on getting them to abandon it. The Palestinians must be put on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel.
Until then -- no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons."
[The Boston Globe]
*
2 comments:
Too true and sad, except for the part about Obama. Can't klnow ywt---don't predict the future. Haven't found anhyone who reliably can. So, any time a President wants to try to work on this, it is better than the original W. Bush doctrine of ignoring the situation. What will happen---NO ONE knows. We will all have to stay tuned. but certainly, nothing will change until the Palestinians are as accepting of Israel as many Israelis already are of a Palestinian State.
Jacoby is probably right about the future, but, as i've pointed out many times before, the MidEast is a place in which it is impossible to predict the future!
I'm skeptical, but perhaps President Obama can do something.
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