Thanks, Ivo, for highlighting Erlanger's article. He makes a lot more sense than anyone else I've read about the new Hamas government.

All the same, his message is basically, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," isn't it? Just resolving the "waqf" vs "Eretz Israel" conundrum is going to take several lifetimes of horrific conflict. Nothing good can ever come out of two so similarly hostile and xenophobic peoples.

Your ideas are silly and unrealistic.   This is a two-party land dispute...whether or not the "mainstream" morons are capable of seeing it or willing to acknowledge it.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

John F Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Faculty Research Working Papers Series
The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy
John Mearsheimer
Steven Walt
WARNING!!!
(*.pdf - 83 pages)

"Israel has always been willing to partition the land."

LOL. Talk about a "moronic" rewriting of history. Or are you too young to remember the 1990s, when even American politicians didn't dare call for a "two-state" solution and it was verboten even to refer to "Judea and Samaria" as "occupied"?

"Partitioning" might have worked in 1948. It's been a tragedy for all concerned that the Arabs didn't accept it back then. But it's never going to work now, when "partitioning" really means nothing more than giving the Palestinians a few paltry reservations that only a few crazy settlers covet.  

First - the historical land of Israel has been partioned once - in 1921, when the British uniltarally created Trans-jordan.  It took hard core revisionist Zionists decades to get over this, but mainstream Zionism moved on.

Second - the Labor party has always put partition on the table, even after 1967.  Its precisely the heartland of Judea and Samaria that were to be handed over to the Arabs as part of the Allon plan. 

Third - the rhetoric of the Shamir government pre-Oslo is really irrelevant at this point.  It only serve to highlight the genuine progress that has occurred in Israeli society since the Intifada and the Oslo process.  There is now a clear consensus for a partition that transfers most of the West Bank (including Judea and Samaria) to the Palestinians if a genuine peace could be secured.  Unfortunately, similar progress has not been made among the Palestinains or the Arabs in general.     

Finally, if you've bothered to look at a map of the barrier route - the land east of it cannot be considered "a few paltry reservations."  It is the historical heartland of the Jewish people with the exception of Jerusalem.  Support for retaining the unpopulated, historically insignificant Jordan Valley for an indefinite period of time is based today - as it was in 1967 - purely on security grounds.

Matt, you had to try very hard to misinterpret my comment.  Meanwhile, 3 out of 22 member nations of the Arab League recognize Israel, but Israel and its supporters are the racists.  It never fails to amaze me how that works.

Every Zionist? Would you like to give any example of a Zionist who insisted that modern Israel should be from the Nile to the Euphrates?

According to Avi Shlaim one of the new Israeli historians the Palestinian state was done in by the British and Jordan not the Israelis. The British wanted military bases to replace the ones they had in Palestine. King Adullah happily invaded the West Bank and scuttled the Arabs efforts against Israel in 1948. This allowed Jews and others to get weapons from Eastern Europe to the Israelis.

I had to laugh at your last paragraph. Given that virtually every Arab state is exclusively a Muslim state I do not see why a Jewish state can't exist. Then there is Israel's economy dwarfs virtually all of the Arabs but that of the oil states. Militarily the Israelis can bring to bear much more military might than all the Arabs put together.

Who cares? A people ohters have attempted to exterminate over time.
Daniel A. Greenbaum

DELETED

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT

The conclusion I draw from the Hamas victory is that a significant percentage of Palestinians no longer have much faith or interest in international efforts to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (including the roadmap). It seems to me that, in voting for Hamas, the Palestinians are turning inward, focusing on their own needs and not worrying much what the rest of the world thinks. In some ways, this parallels what's happening in Israel, with Sharon's (and now Kadima's) unilateral withdrawal plan. Both the Palestinians and Israelis are giving up on negotiation and going about doing what they think they need to do for themselves. Maybe this will turn out good. Certainly, the Palestinian situation would improve if they really focused on building a sound government for themselves. Many in the West will be skeptical about Hamas's ability to do that, but the Palestinians see Hamas as more effective and less corrupt than Fatah. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

Read your post again. Notice that you don't even mention the Palestinians but instead suggest that this is fundamentally a conflict between Israel and the "Arab League."  And your adjectives! Israel deserves to be "secure," but it's enough for the "Arab state" to be "emergent."

If I misinterpreted your post, I apologize. It would be very refreshing to read someone with a handle like yours acknowledge that Palestinians are real (not fictitious, as Golda believed) human beings with at least some rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness west of the Jordan.  

Matt in NYC,

Notice that you don't even mention the Palestinians but instead suggest that this is fundamentally a conflict between Israel and the "Arab League."

The Palestinian Authority has membership in the Arab League.  This has historically been a conflict over fundamental national rights, more than any specific territory.  If nothing else, the 20-year span of Egyptian and Jordanian control over Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, between the establishment of (and initial attacks on) Israel and the six-day war, illustrates the priority of rejecting non-Arab national rights in the Middle East over the emergence (let alone the establishment) of Palestinian national self-determination for the regionally dominant Arab establishment that has nevertheless historically, ostensibly and consistently acted as the defenders of Palestine.  Unfortunately for the Palestinians, Palestine has always served better as a cynical platitude than as a genuine cause within the Arab League.  But again, the international community is married to the idea that this is a simple two-party land dispute between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and that Israel is the only party to the conflict with any influence over its circumstances.

The national rights of the Arab and Jewish peoples ought not to be presumed mutually exclusive in former British Mandatory Palestine.  Arab peoples are not the only peoples native to the region, but the dominant regional establishment has insisted upon Arab political supremacy in the region from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Persian Gulf.  Understanding this is to understand why the only multinational organization in the Middle East is called "the Arab League."

Purple State

While I suppose American and European Jews might still speak up if the Middle East had no oil who would care about the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Who, even here, cared about Rwanda and now Dafur? 

With the possible exception of Iran, the OPEC nations have decided to keep selling oil to the West and Japan regardless of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

My guess is that a lot of people are looking forward to the Wall being completed and some quiet settling in for a period of time.

You might want to read Irshad Manji,a fellow at Yale, is the author of "The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith.", Op-Ed piece in today's Times.. [The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/opinion/18manji.html?_r=1&oref=slogin]

Daniel A. Greenbaum

The Palestinian Authority has membership in the Arab League.  This has historically  been a conflict over fundamental  national rights, more than any specific  territory. 

I think it is is a mistake to place too much emphasis in this conflict on competing claims of national rights, or the rights of peoples.  I don't doubt at all that an individual's sense of identity, and of belonging to this or that people, has much to do with why they fight, with what they think they are defending, and with their plans for the future.  But I don't think those world views, which are often concoctions of equal parts fantasy and reality, should play a large role in the international approach to the problem.  Of course, since the views do play a role in the psychology of the disputants themselves, they must be taken into account in attempting to achieve a peaceful settlement.  But that doesn't mean they should be credited as true reflections of reality, or the most compelling legal factors.

I find that whenever I discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with people, the defenders of Israel often start talking about "Jews" and "Arabs", and then making invidious ethnic comparisons as though they are trying to prove to me that Jews are just better human beings overall than Arabs, and that on that basis I should prefer the interests of the Jews, as a people, to the Arabs, as a people.  The Jews, I often hear, are smarter, more moral, more peaceful, more modern, more industrious, more liberal, more democratic etc. etc.  One of my Jewish friends in college even blurted out, in the middle of a conversation about Israel, "the Arabs are very dirty, you know!"  I assume one might here the same thing from many of the defenders of Palestinian rights in the Middle East, but I have less personal experience of it.

I don't believe those of us who are concerned mainly about the advancement of the rule of law, particularly international law, and with the promotion and preservation of peace and stability, should fall into this trap of playing the game of dueling ethnicities.  Nor should we focus too much on speculative abstractions about "nations" and "national rights".  The focus here should be on more tractable questions about individuals and concrete local communities, and on their entitlement to the property they actually hold.  There should be an emphasis on illegal takings, the acquisition of territory by force, on the use of violence against innocents and the expulsion of people from their land.  All of these actions are disruptive of order, and there is global consensus about their criminality.  They are cases of manifest injustice to individuals, regardless of the ethnic or national groups to which those individuals belong. I also think it is a matter of common sense that addressing ancient crimes should be much less important than addressing recent crimes in our efforts to preserve peace and order.

I understand that there is a tendency on both sides to view the conflict in the broadest and most cataclysmic terms, as a conflict between large ethnic, national or religious formations, such as a conflict between the Jewish people and the Arab people, or between the Jewish people and the Muslim ummah, or between the West and the Arab World, or even more locally between the Jewish people and the Palestinian people.  But as I see it, these impersonal "struggles" are all distracting and romantic melodramas, which prevent focussed attention on the more clear and better defined rights and wrongs at hand.

In 19th century Palestine, there were hardly any Jews at all in the region.  Nor was there yet much of a Palestinian people.  There were a variety of inhabitants of a cosmoplolitan Ottoman state, mostly "Arab" and Muslim - but also parts of other ethnic and religious groups - who certainly had a strong sense of being part of some local community, with local traditions and customs, and also part of various larger communities stretching across broad regions of the Earth.  But there wasn't much of a collectivity you could call a "Palestinian nation", or even "Palestinian people".  The was an emerging regional sense of Arab nationhood - but one would be hard-pressed to define in any objective and clear sense who exactly an Arab was, outside the obvious core in the Arabian peninsula, and how far their "national rights" extended.   And certainly there was nothing resembling a Jewish "nation" in Palestine, with something approaching national rights.

You talk about non-Arab natives of Palestine, with equal "national" rights there.  I'm not sure what sort of nativity you have in mind.  There are indeed Israelis today who are native to Israel, since they have been born there.  But during the time of the initial Zionist immigration movements, there were hardly any Jewish natives of Palestine at all - I believe something like 1500.  And one can't reasonably call a global, largely European collection of Jews "natives of Palestine" in anything but the most extravagant and speculative sense.

My own ancestors were mainly from Ireland, and the members of the family who live in Ireland believe that our earlier ancestors in the partilineal chain were Basque.  Do I possess some part of a national claim to Irelend or the Basque region?  On the other hand, since most of my ancestors were probably Celts, do I have a claim to immigrate to anywhere I want in Northern Europe because of my connection to the "Celtic people"?  This sort of thinking is a recipe for global chaos, and should be resisted.  It is hard for me to assign any weight at all to the claim of a modern day Israeli settler in Palestine that he has some right to the land upon which he sits by virtue of the "national rights" of his people, or by virtue of the fact that some "ancestor" 100 generations back either abandoned that land or was pushed off it.

MANJI PIECE IS RIGHT ON

Upon what shall we base the advancement of a functional system of international law if not on the speculative abstractions about nations and some basis of equality in the application of national rights?

Upon the rights of states and individuals primarily; and upon the rights of local political communities as well.

I believe Israel, for example, has a right to exist because it is a state whose existence has been accepted and recognized by the majority of the international community, which is itself constituted by states.  Some of these states have strong national cores; others are multinational.  Some are ethnically uniform; others are not.  Their legitimacy and rights as states within the international community do not depend on these accidents of their histories.

The rights of individuals also do not depend on their membership in larger national or ethnic communities.  If the ruling elite of some country embarks on a campaign of murder in some region because they see the people of that region as a rival ethnic or national group, that is an evil thing.  If they only see those people only as a ragtag bunch of weakly related peasants and nomads who happen to live on land which they covet, then the murder is equally an evil thing.

Lots of people in Palestine over the past century have had their houses bulldozed, members of their family killed, and their property stolen.  They have also been chased off their land by military and paramilitary force.  What does it matter whether these people are part of some grand "nation", with "national rights" in addition to their own individual and local community rights to their houses, their lands, their plows, their fields, their grazing lands, their carts and their horses and cows and goats.  And what does their right not to be killed, raped or shot, or have their family members killed, raped or shot have to do with what nation they belong to?

If you have a town or village somewhere where people know each other, and work with each other, and trade among themselves, and form plans and agreements for the common good, and recognize common leaders, and go to each other's weddings and funerals, and send their kids to the same schools, and attend some of the same religious observances, then I think that is a very good thing, and its destruction is inherently tragic.  I don't think it matters much whether that community is part of a nation of some kind, or whether the people are related in some deep ethnic sense.

Similarly, if a terrorsist blows up a bunch of Jewish teenagers in a pizza shop, or old people on a bus, that's just vile.  It's not vile because those teenagers might belong to a Jewish nation that has some sort of national right to the land on which the pizza shop sits - it's vile because they are just a bunch of teenagers in a pizza shop.

Personally, I think the whole history of national liberation movements that we have seen over the past couple of centuries is a dangerous and corrosive movement, one that has been horribly destructive of peace through its embrace of atavistic cultural fomations and fanatical  identity politics that strain against prevailing political order.  I think the same thing whether the supposed nation involved is Greek, German, Jewish, Irish, "Aryan", Ukrainian, Albanian, French or Basque.

The Basque separatists have been trying to trying to create a seaparate country for some time.  Of course you all will have to deal with bin Laden who wants Spain back.

However if you want to go live in th Basque region you can.  Where did you think Jews in 1945 were going to go? The Palestinians can have a state or they can continue to whine about being humiliated.  The Israelis are not going to let Jews ever be murder enmass again.  If you and the Arabs can't live with that you will have to get over it until the Palestinians become the equivalent of the American Indian.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Zionista, you begin by asserting that national rights precede human rights, but then go on to talk immediately about the fact that the absence of a Palestinian state is part of the reason the Palestinians can't secure their human rights.  Three comments:

I agree entirely that statelessness is a condition to be avoided in the modern world, and the fact that some people have no state to protect them and advance their interests is one reason they are unable to achieve the same level of dignity that others have achieved.  But states are not nations.  Being the citizen or subject of some state does not require belonging to a nation that controls that state.  Nor is the existence of a nation itself a sufficient justification for the existence of a state controlled by that nation.  There are way too many nations, and they criss-cross the world in too many complicated patterns.  They should not be the determining factor in settling upon political order.  To allow that is to open the door to unending violence.

Also, in speaking of precedence, I assume you must be talking about causal precedence, not logical or moral precedence.  You may be right that an individual needs to be part of some larger group, a nation or a state, in order to see their human rights secured.  But do you mean to suggest that people don't have human rights unless they are part of a nation that has national rights from which those human rights devolve?  Are you saying that unless we see the rights of people in Palestine as flowing from some prior Arab national rights, we have no reason to say that they have rights which have been violated?

Finally, I have no doubt that many of the participants in this conflict see it as a conflict between two large peoples - the "Jewish people" and the "Arab people", and their conflicting "national rights".  Not all do.  And in any case, the fact that some disputants think in such terms is no reason for the rest of us to think in those terms.

"The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today--but the boundaries of the Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them." By 1949 Ben-Gurion had proved that he was as good as his word. (Simha Flapan, p. 52-53)

Soon after the U.N. Proposed Partitioning Palestinian in November 1947, Ben-Gurion urged his party to accept the partition because it will never be final,"not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements." (Simha Flapan, p. 3

Ben-Gurion clearly never believed in static borders, but dynamic ones as described in the Bible. He stated during a discussion with his aides:

"Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interests was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . .  Many think that we're still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense. As for setting the borders--- it's an open-ended matter. In the Bible as well as in our history, there all kinds of definitions of the country's borders, so there's no real limit. Bo border is absolute. If it's a desert--- it could just as well be the other side. If it's sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 6)

Vis-a-vis the 1948 war:

• Although there was an arms embargo on the warring parties in the Middle East, the embargo negatively affected the Arabs more than the Israelis. While the Arab armies were depleting their arms and ammunitions, the Israeli army was stockpiling weapons and ammunitions from a huge arms shipment from Czechoslovakia that arrived in early May, 1948.
   
• By October 1948, the Israeli army had 90,000 armed men, while the Arab armies had 68,000 armed men.
   
• It's a fabricated myth that seven well equipped, organized, and coordinated Arab armies attempted to PUSH the poorly armed Jews into the sea

As for the Israeli military, terrorism is the most effective form of warfare - IF it is properly applied. Most of the time it isn't. But sooner or later someone will figure out that the best way to eliminate Israel is to nuke Tel Aviv with a stolen Israeli nuclear weapon.

When that happens, it's game over for Israel.

Richard Steven Hack

www.computerproblemssolvedcheap.com 

By the way, as for being a "people others have tried to exterminate over time", do consider the fact that it was the Christian religion that enshrined this need to "punish" the Jews for allegedly killing their God - even when it was a fact that Jesus was a good Jew who had no intention of forming a new religion, let alone one that would persecute his own people for the next two thousand years. Christianity was founded by a Roman double agent named Saul who eventually become "St. Paul". Jesus own followers wanted to kill this guy, and he had to be escorted out of town by Roman soldiers. He then "hijacked" this Jewish prophet as the deity for his own religion.

From a Transhuman viewpoint, this is truly the most laughable part of human history.

Equally laughable is how the Jews then turned into their worst enemies - ethnic cleansing racists - as a result of their treatment by the Christians, becoming fertile ground for equally corrupt power-seeking racists such as Ben-Gurion and the other Zionists. No great surprise, really, since the Jews had been power-seeking nationalist fanatics like everybody else in the Middle East at the time.

All of which proves to the Transhumanist that humans simply cannot function rationally. Once a monkey, always a monkey. Which is why your accusation that I'm sort of "anti-Semite" is truly off base. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it, and I oppose all religion, not just Judaism.

Unfortunately (or fotunately depending on one's perspective) for humans, Transhumans are going to change the rules of the game over the next fifty years. And the Israelis, the Arabs, the Persians, the Russians, the Chinese, the West, everybody - are going to get left behind - if they're lucky and smart enough not to interfere. If they're not lucky and not smart, they're going to get to see just how fast a planet can be depopulated with the right technology.

Richard Steven Hack

www.computerproblemssolvedcheap.com 

Thus far I've only read the first 32 pages of this eighty-page paper by Profs John Mearheimer of the Univ of Chicago and Steve Walt of Harvard JFK School of Government but so far it's an excellent piece of scholarship and a bombshell in its potential impact.

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011

Here are a few quotes from what I've already read.

U.S. foreign policy shapes events in every corner of the globe. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East, a region of recurring instability and enormous strategic importance. Most recently, the Bush Administration's attempt to transform the region into a community of democracies has helped produce a resilient insurgency in Iraq, a sharp rise in world oil prices, and terrorist bombings in Madrid, London, and Amman. With so much at stake for so many, all countries need to understand the forces that drive U.S. Middle East policy.
The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives. As we show below, however, neither of those explanations can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel.

Instead, the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the Israel Lobby. Other special interest groups have managed to skew U.S. foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical. [1] In the pages that follow, we describe how the Lobby has accomplished this feat, and how its activities have shaped America's actions in this critical region. Given the strategic importance of the Middle East and its potential impact on others, both Americans and non Americans need to understand and address the Lobby's influence on U.S. policy.

Some readers will find this analysis disturbing, but the facts recounted here are not in serious dispute among scholars. Indeed, our account relies heavily on the work of Israeli scholars and journalists, who deserve great credit for shedding light on these issues. We also rely on evidence provided by respected Israeli and international human rights organizations. Similarly, our claims about the Lobby's impact rely on testimony from the Lobby's own members, as well as testimony from politicians who have worked with them. Readers may reject our conclusions, of course, but the evidence on which they rest is not controversial.

[...]

This new rationale seems persuasive, but Israel is in fact a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
[...]

A final reason to question Israel's strategic value is that it does not act like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore U.S. requests and renege on promises made to top U.S. leaders (including past pledges to halt settlement construction and to refrain from "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian leaders). [20] Moreover, Israel has provided sensitive U.S. military technology to potential U.S. rivals like China, in what the U.S. State Department Inspector General called "a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorized transfers." [21] According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, Israel also "conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any ally." [22] In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which Israel reportedly passed onto the Soviet Union to gain more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official (Larry Franklin) had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat, allegedly aided by two AIPAC officials. [23] Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the United States, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.

Apart from its alleged strategic value, Israel's backers also argue that it deserves unqualified U.S. support because 1) it is weak and surrounded by enemies, 2) it is a democracy, which is a morally preferable form of government; 3) the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment, and 4) Israel's conduct has been morally superior to its adversaries behavior.

On close inspection, however, each of these arguments is unpersuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel's existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, Israel's past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.

[...]

No discussion of how the Lobby operates would be complete without examining one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-Semitism. Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy an influence that AIPAC celebrates stands a good chance of getting labeled an anti-Semite. In fact, anyone who says that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though the Israeli media themselves refer to America's "Jewish Lobby." In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. This tactic is very effective, because anti-Semitism is loathsome and no responsible person wants to be accused of it.

[...]

U.S. officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft even declared in October 2004 that Sharon has President Bush "wrapped around his little finger." [137] If Bush tries to distance the United States from Israel, or even criticizes Israeli actions in the occupied territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress.

Democratic Party presidential candidates understand these facts of life too, which is why John Kerry went to great lengths to display his unalloyed support for Israel in 2004 and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today. [138] Maintaining U.S. support for Israel's policies against the Palestinians is a core goal of the Lobby, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States worked together to shape the Bush Administration's policy towards Iraq, Syria, and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a critical element. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001 2003), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now Counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the "real threat" from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. [139] The "unstated threat" was the "threat against Israel," Zelikow told a University of Virginia audience in September 2002, noting further that "the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."

On August 16, 2002, eleven days before Vice President Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hard line speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that "Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein." [140] By this point, according to Sharon, strategic coordination between Israel and the U.S. had reached "unprecedented dimensions," and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programs. [141] As one retired Israeli general later put it, "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities." [142]

Dan K,

Are you saying that unless we see the rights of people in Palestine as flowing from some prior Arab national rights, we have no reason to say that they have rights which have been violated?

Through the assertion of national rights, human rights are best managed within a system of international law.

I'm not sure what you mean Zionista.  It is certainly true that the international insititutions charged with securing the human rights of individuals are weak, in comparison with the power of individual states.  So as a practical matter, an individual's rights are vulnerable if she doesn't belong to a state - a political community - with both the power and determination to protect those rights.  That is indeed the chief mechanism by which human rights are managed in the real world.

Human rights are also managed, protected and secured by the application of external political pressure by coalitions of states on states that are negligent of, or hostile to, the human rights of their subjects.

But none of this requires, at any stage, the assertion of national rights. A nation is supposed to be a cultural entity whose members are united by common ancestry, and other cultural forms of life that go along with that common ancestry.  Some states regard themselves as the homeland of a nation or nations; others do not.  But a state's legitimacy is secured through its recognition by other states, and in no way depends - legally, logically or practically - on its connection or lack of connection to a national group.

Assertions of national identity, and of special rights associated with such identity, have been as much a cause of reactionary change and oppression as of progressive change or liberation.  Those who assert national rights often do so in opposition to an existing multinational political order, and as an excuse for discriminating among different groups of peoples inside a state jurisdiction, and denying the human rights of those not in the national group.  They also rely on the assertion of national rights to lay claim to territory that is part of the supposed "homeland" and lies outside the boundaries of their state's recognized borders.  Germany is the chief example of both of these problems.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Worst President Ever?

George Bush thinks he's Lincoln

 The Plaintiff rests

 So clear headed.  You are right about one thing.  The Palestinians put up less of a fight and were less ready for a state than the Indians ever were.  That was why the British did in their state.  Let me know when you find those mult-culural Arab states in which minorities can vote and worship and in which women have rights. 

If the Palestinians want a state, that will probably have more problems from Syria, you never mention that Lebanon, occupied land, israel, Jordan are all in Greater Syria.  I do not remember the Syrians ever renouncing their claims.   

I know being a bigot is hard work maybe you can take a break.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

ivo

I just read a synopsis of the Measheimer and Walt article in the London Book Reivew.  It is such an anti-Semitic scred. Since one is at the University of Chicago and the other at Harvard I was curious what you know about them?  No wonder academia in America has so ittle influence on policy.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Daniel - You are far too quick to drag out the anti-semitism card. It seems like your favorite cure-all comment. In many of the forums here you criticize the Bush Administration for it's mistakes on Iraq, the economy, social policy etc. Yet when it comes to Israel, Jews are absolutely blameless. I don't know about your synagogue but at mine we have to make sizeable "voluntary" contributions annually to Israel and frankly this Jew feels a lot of blame for how that money is indirectly used to subjugate the Palestinians and avoid a Just Peace. We have to abandon the settlements - they should NEVER have been built in the first place. If we don't there will never be peace.

You know as well as I do that without a just peace someday on a trawler easing past the Israeli coast can launch 3 silkworm missles with nuclear warheads. The Arrow system can't defend against these kinds of missles and three of them can forever wipe out Israel. Without changes on our part, that day will come.

Daniel Greenbaum writes:

I just read a synopsis of the Mearsheimer and Walt article in the London Book Review.  It is such an anti-Semitic screed.

Unlike Daniel Greenbaum I read the entire article.  It is not an "anti-Semitic screed" but rather a devastating indictment of the Israeli lobby in America.  Ironically, the article predicts "anti-Semitic" slander:

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America's 'Jewish Lobby'. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.

Since Greenbaum is an extremely vocal participant in the pro-Israeli lobby we should not be surprised by his squeals when the activities of the lobby are exposed.

Zionista, you are a reasonable person. I often rate your posts highly, especially when I see someone else underrating them, however much I disagree with them. Imho the reason "The international community is married to the idea that this is a simple two-party land dispute between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and that Israel is the only party to the conflict with any influence over its circumstances" is simple.  It is the truth. (Except of course the US has a lot of influence too, but it has been mainly detrimental to everybody's interests, allowing Israel to do whatever it wants, no matter how crazy or criminal.) See the Mearsheimer & Walt article.  This is a two party land dispute.  Israel wants land it has no right to - the West Bank in particular, and has been refusing land for peace a la SC 242 for 35 years.  The entire Arab League is willing to offer recognition, peace treaties and fully normalized relations, everything you want, if Israel just withdraws from these territories, which Israel managed perfectly well without before 1967. The Arab idea is that they have only a few cards to play - ending the belligerency, recognition, full relations.  Asking them to do this without anything in return from Israel is asking something for nothing.  Perhaps some something for nothing could help peace along, but it is absurd to demand it, or blame the Arab states for not giving something for nothing.  Israel could give "something for nothing" too, like abandoning and not expanding settlements, stopping collective punishments, destroying homes to seize land, etc. - all war crimes. Israel could just accept peace offers like the Abdullah plan.  The facts that Israel has treated myriads of serious Arab peace offers for decades with contempt, and has been the more violent and aggressive of the two sides shows that Israel bears the lion's share of blame for the continuation of the conflict.

It depends on who you mean by Arabs.  Obviously Israel had working relations with Egypt and Jordan since the mid-1970s  If you mean Iraq or Syria or the Palestinians that is mythical.

 1921 was the year of the first Arab riots in Palestine.  The Jewish population had gotten large enough to get noticed.  The riots were directed at the British and was put down by the Briitish. According to both Avi Shlaim and Sholomo Ben-Ami in Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy The riot convinced Ben-Gurion that some sort of unitary two state solution was not going to work.  The second set of riots in 1936-1939 set the stage for the British to totally doublecross the Palestinians.  (see pp.6-7).

It might have been wiser as Gorenberg and Ben-Ami both suggest if the Israelis had never held onto the territories they won in the 1967 War.  The kept waiting too long for an Arab negotiator to step up and anticipated Hussein would be more like his grandfather.  Also some Israelis saw the easy victory as the signal that the re-creation of the Biblical israel was within grasp.

One of the unfortunate things was that Labor was both arrogant and too much like many of those here socialists. ( I could not resist the point.) The result was that Begin and Likud received the support of the "Arab" Jews and the growing settler movement often from the United States.   It was this coalition that gave us the nonsense of Judea and Sumaria as if modern Israel's borders were going to be shaped by the words of the Bible.

However, Clinton, Dennis Ross, Ehud Barak and Ben-Ami all of who were there say the same thing.  Arafat could have had Gaza and the West Bank.  What he could not get was the repatriation of Palestinians into what would be Israel.  Basically Arafat could not take yes for an answer because he had been promising a whole lot more to his people.

What you do not give enough weight to with that if the Zionists did not care all that much that there was an Arab population in Palestine, neither did the British, the Arabs did not wantt Jewish neighbors even if they were buying the land and working it.  israel did not steel anybody's land they were not willing to be killed and were a lot better at arms than the Arabs.  Arafat and Hamas both ulitimately want Israel gone. 

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Egypt and Jordan were making quite public peace offers by 1971.  It was not the Israelis, but the Arabs who had to wait for a serious negotiator to step up.  Of course Israel was always willing to negotiate openly, but with demands that even the USA saw as humiliating to its enemies.  Open negotiations in such an atmosphere are just another way of rubbing it in. Jordan had been making feelers since 1967 which were at most an open secret - Finkelstein's book has quotations from semiofficial Israeli publications (Middle East Record, 1967-68 etc.) citing them. There is practically zero doubt that Jordan, always Israel's best enemy, would have signed a peace treaty with Israel as early as 1967-8 if it got all the West Bank back. According to Shlaim's Iron Wall, from interviews with Hussein, Israel was willing to make pretty good offers, better than Barak years later, but not 100%, and with Jerusalem of course a major sticking point. Even Syria had accepted 242 by 1972.  The PLO mainstream moved toward a 2 state solution by the mid to late 70's. (And the USA and Israel of course recognized this.)  There were of course PLO rejectionists, there was some back and forth, but for practical purposes they had accepted 242 and signaled willingness to recognize Israel by then. (E.g. PLO/Syrian authorship / acceptance of a 2-state  US-vetoed draft SC resolution in 1976.)  The Israeli response, generally backed by the US, to such feelers, and many such Arab League initiatives, was total rejectionism until Rabin.  It is quite dubious that Arafat could have gotten Gaza and the West Bank, especially with the  offer at Camp David.  Taba put the 2 sides much closer, but it was far too late.  The stuff about a total right of return is basically post facto propaganda, unsupported by the evidence.  More serious analysts with less of an axe to grind tend to see high Palestinian return demands as a bargaining chip.  You can have any number of people testifying.  If they do not have a record for veracity, and do not point to actual documents, but just make vague accusations, their testimony is not worth much.   I don't think that it is too likely that Israeli foolishness is great enough that it would continue to reject peace if not for the settlements - the true core and cause of the continuation of the conflict. Of course Arafat and Hamas ultimately want Israel gone.  They had/have a perfect right to such a desire. However, if one looks at them, even Hamas, objectively, one sees that they are willing to accept and recognize Israel for now and are willing to strive towards a unified state by peaceful means.  There is nothing wrong with this position.

The 1921 partition is an astonishingly successful myth due to Jabotinsky. 

This conversation (like all on the topic) managed to get off track.  But the starting point was a statement that claimed that Zionists were fundamentalists whose position on the biblical land of Israel were parallel to that of Hamas' with respect to Palestine being a inviolable Islamic wakf.  

Whether you accept or reject Fromkin's account of the creation of trans-Jordan (which still involves the British importing a proxy Arab monarch from Mecca to eastern Palestine), it was certainly contained part of Biblical Israel, which extended past the Jordan River.  Mainstream Zionism accepted this partition of biblical Israel, and it accepted other partitions as well.

Israel is at best slowly approaching the conciliatory attitude that the Arabs have been offering for 35 years. 

Its one thing to argue for Israeli rejectionism - especially under the Likud-led governments of Begin and Shamir, but a "conciliatory attitude" from the Arabs is simply a fantasy.How do you read the position taken by the Arab League at Khortoum as "conciliatory"? or the response by the rest of the Arab League to the Camp David accords as "conciliatory"?  Further, what of the boycott, or state-sponsored media broadcasting telenovels of the Protocals of the Elders of Zion?  Where, for example, is the Arab equivalent to B'tselem or Peace Now?  Who are the Arab intellectuals that mirror the Israeli new historians, prodding the Arab public to reevaluate its myths?  The world is replete with Israeli and Diaspora navel gazers, dissenters and affirmers of the humanity of Arabs.  Where are their Arab counterparts?

Keeping the Jordan Valley a la the Allon plan is stupid and insulting, and utterly opposed to Israeli security.  

I'm against Israel's annexing the Jordan Valley, because it ultimately needs to be reserved for a Palestinian state, which if it has any chance of stability needs to be intimately tied to (or simply part of) Jordan.  But in order for Israel to transfer the Jordan Valley, there would need to be a radically different Palestinian polity than what exists today. Unfortunately, rather than having the conversation of how to get that Palestinian polity to that point, most discussions degenerate into assaults on the legitimacy of Israel.  

Richard Steven Hack,

Go back and read every "mainstream Zionist" for the last hundred years. "Eretz Israel" means an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. Period. It means the Palestinians have no right to be there at all. It means Palestinian ethnic cleansing.

Without supporting your argument with any resolution from any Zionist Congress or any legislation from any Knesset session exposes you for a troll.

Just in case you didn't read it before, listen up; ALL YOU JEW-HATERS CAN GO REVEL IN THIS THINLY DISGUISED TRAFFICKING IN STEREOTYPES--A 21st CENTURY PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION FOR BLOGGERS LIKE HACK AND EVANS. I AM DELIGHTED TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY WHERE JEWS--JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, INCLUDING  ARAB-AMERICANS-- CAN MAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY WANT WITHIN THE LAW AND, IF THEY ARE SO INCLINED, USE THAT MONEY TO SUPPORT CANDIDATES WHO WILL IMPLEMENT THEIR IDEAS, POLICIES, AND VALUES. I AM ALSO DELIGHTED THAT FOR NOW, AND FOR DECADES TO COME, VIRTUALLY ALL OF THOSE CANDIDATES--OF BOTH MAJOR PARTIES--WILL SUPPORT THE ONLY GENUIINE ALLY THIS COUNTRY HAS IN THE MIDEAST.  THEY WILL DO SO NOT BECAUSE OF THE CAMPAIGN MONEY, BUT BECAUSE ISRAEL IS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THAT REGION THAT RESEMBLES AMERICA IN ITS DEMOCRATIC TRADITIONS, ITS TREATMENT OF WOMEN, ITS ADVANCES IN SCIENCE,TECHNOLO GY AND MEDICINE, ITS INTELLECTUAL FERMENT, ITS VIBRANT ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL LIFE,  AND ITS WILLINGNESS TO BEAR ANY BURDEN TO HELP PRO-WESTERN DEMOCRACIES  FIGHT THE SCOURGE OF TERROR. AND IF YOU JEW-HATERS DON'T LIKE THAT, YOU CAN MOVE OR DROP DEAD.

Dan K,

But none of this requires, at any stage, the assertion of national rights. A nation is supposed to be a cultural entity whose members are united by common ancestry, and other cultural forms of life that go along with that common ancestry.  Some states regard themselves as the homeland of a nation or nations; others do not.  But a state's legitimacy is secured through its recognition by other states, and in no way depends - legally, logically or practically - on its connection or lack of connection to a national group.

Not necessarily, no.  But most states do have their origins in the national components of some ethnic identity or another, including language, culture, legal codes, shared history, etc.  And there is little avenue for appeal to human rights by individuals or stateless peoples under international law without the benefit of national institutions.  In the example of the Jews, Israel and Zionism under discussion here, there simply was no other avenue of appeal over violations of the human rights of Jews in the face of institutional antisemitism, immigration quotas illustrated by the tragedy of the St. Louis, or in the restrictions of Jewish emigration to British Palestine regarding the White Paper of 1939.  All that was left was to assert Jewish national self-determination in the only historic political homeland Jews have ever had.  The stateless Arabs of former British Palestine are similarly vulnerable.  At the risk of repeating myself, the national rights of Jewish and Arab peoples in the former British Mandate are not mutually exclusive.

I am sure you have your signed copy of the Protocols of Zion.

I read it.  Jews make up 2% of the American population.  Kevin Phillips is currently discussing in The Book Club about his concern about the power of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and other Evangelical Christians one of whom is president. 

I understand the Jews were responsible for the Depression, the Black Plague and the Crusades too.  Did I forget using Christian baby's blood for making Passover Matzoh?

When the Left and the Right panic and what a scapegoat for about two thouand years the Jew have been the chosen ones.  It is precisely because of this tendency in Europe from the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust all across Europe, while the U.S. sat relatively passively, led directly to the State of Israel.  Nothing demonstrated more the need for a safe haven for Jews 

Daniel A. Greenbaum

It is always a nice way to be bigoted to say you will  be accused of being a bigot in the first place.  The Klan and the Aryan Nation knows they will be called rascist but they reject the labels.

Actually I just don't like anti-Semites.  I have nothing to do with the Israeli lobby.  I have never given them money or acted on their behalf.  As a pragmatic matter i think israel should leave the settlements and let a Palestinian state arise there.  I don't like those who support the murder of Jews.

I have read the rest of it and it is an anti-Anti Semitic screed as your quote from it hightlights. So Colore Oscuro your endorsement of the age old "it is the Jews fault" speaks for itself. 

Daniel A. Greenbaum

This article you so favor is filled with half truths and oneside arguments as to be laughable.  They use quotes with citation or context. 

"There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians."  (p3) This is largely false the main reason for the attacks on the United States was Americans presence in Saudi Arabia.  However, since Jerusalem is the capital of Israel al-Qaida objects to Jews in Jerusalem and the existence of Israel.

They see Jews every in the Clinton Administration, and more in the Bush Administration and the Congress persuing Israel not America's interest.  (p10) 

"It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the US to deal with any and all threats to Israel's security.  If their efforts to shape US policy succeed, Israel's enemies will be weakened or overthrown, Isreael will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most of the fighting, dying , rebuilding and paying." (p24)

That you do not see this for the anti-Semitism it is shoud embarrass and shame you.  This article is an unbelievable act of anti-Semitism.  It seems Jewish conspiracies everywhere.  Perhaps these guys are just paranoid and not anti-Semitic.

"... the Palestinians can be wiped out..."  Who is threating to wipeout the Palestinians.  Arafat stole millions and millions from them and after they supported the Kuwait invasion by Iraq the Palestinians were thrown out of Saudi Arabia.  The Jordanians in the early 1970s killed Palestinians so as to drive them to Lebanon, an act remembered in the name of the group Black September.  The Lebanese then drove the Palestinians out of Lebanon.  This leaves aside the Jordanian invasion of the West Bank by the Jordanians aided by the British in 1948.   

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Israel is by far the strongest party in the region and militarily a formidable power, perhaps second only to the US and England in the world. You are confusing qualitative dominance with overall military power. 

Israel has the most advanced military forces in the region, but at a certain point numbers do matter - and the IDF, even at full capacity is greatly outnumbered by Arab forces.  Further, any suggestion that the nuclear-armed massive Russian and Chinese military are even close to strength with the tiny IDF is in the realm of fantasy.  Israel is at a severe disadvantage in any war of attrition - it has fewer soldiers and generally is fighting at maximum mobilization.  Israel has little to no strategic depth.  Finally, there is the cold strategic reality that Israel cannot afford to lose any wars.   

 

It has no problem defending itself and if that kind of power does not allow the country to take some risks, there will never be a good time

Oslo was a maor gamble for peace.  It didn't pay out.  The withdrawal from Lebanon was another risk - with mixed results.  The Gaza withdrawal is another risk. 

There is a major flaw in your logic  - Israel has no responsible party to turn the West Bank over to.  Wishing Fatah, or the PA, or Hamas to accept the existence of Israel within the 1967 borders does not make it so.  Qassam rockets have been launched from the sites of the evacuated settlements in Gaza - fired towards the refineries at Ashkelon.  Is Israel supposed to take the risk of having such rockets fired out of the West Bank at Ben Gurion Airport?  How many civilian planes would have to be downed before you would feel comfortable with Israeli retaliation? 

I'm in favor of taking a sensible risk - removing the isolated settlements deep in the West Bank and relying more on the new border fence rather than internal roadblocks to stem suicide attacks.  This will improve the day-to-day lives of many Palestinians, and facilitate an eventual long-term settlement.  But removing the IDF entirely from the West Bank and turning over security to Hamas - that's not a brave risk for Peace, its collective suicide.

I think the International community and Arab nations would take this deal in a heartbeat and make damn sure the Palestinians lived up to it.

First, what's your basis for this belief other than it seems reasonable and logical to you?  The Palestinians don't seem to think they need to compromise on the refugee issue.  Arafat's position at Taba was that he couldn't compromise on this issue or he'd wind up dead.  What your basis for Palestinian  pragmatism on this issue?  Especially after the election of a Hamas government. 

Further what is your basis for Arab governments supporting the resettlement of Palestinian refugees anywhere but pre-1967 Israel.  Outside of Jordan and possibly Lebanon, do any of these regimes benefit by the resolution of the Palestinian problem?  What do you they get in return for losing their most reliable distraction from their own domestic failings? 

Finally, how would the international community make sure the Palestinians "live up" to the terms of the agreement?  What if they don't?  The track record of UN monitors on Israel's borders is atrocious (see the run-up to the 1967 war, where the UN monitors meekly permitted Nassar to breach the 1956 armistice agreement).   

For all the hostile rhetoric, Israel under Sharon and now Olmert moved towards the position you advocate.  The settlement blocs that are being annexed, with the exception of Ariel - lie on or near the 1967 border.  The land east of the unilateral border is going to be cleared of settlements.  It is misguided to view the Israeli settlements west of the barrier as the only, or even the primary obstacles to a lasting Peace.   

You have to ask yourself the question why is Israeli moderation met with increasingly strident opposition to Israeli policies.  Paul Berman in Terror and Liberalism has an excellent discussion of this phenomena.         

But removing the IDF entirely from the West Bank and turning over security to Hamas - that's not a brave risk for Peace, its collective suicide.

OK, so don't remove the IDF.  Just remove the settlements.  If all you really care about with regard to the West Bank is its military use in helping to secure Israel proper, then you should call for a withdrawl of the settlements, and a heightened IDF presence in the West Bank.  It will be much easier for the IDF to sustain defensive operations, and protect Israelis, without the distracting and destabilizing presence of a bunch of vulnerable settlers in the West Bank.

Zionista, the Abdullah plan is nothing but  a modernized and somewhat more precise 242, with the Arabs offering more than in the original.  That Israel rejects it (though not formally) just means that Israel rejects 242 in reality. That 242 hasn't worked is because the US allows Israel to not comply. No Arab state denies  "Israel's national  sovereignty and political independence" anyway; not recognizing a nation is something different.  Concerning the clause you quote, the only thing Israel has wanted, and not very much, is the dropping of belligerency and some kind of recognition.  The Arabs have at least as much ( in reality clearly more) to fear from Israeli threats and acts of force than vice versa.  It's Jordan then / Palestine now and Syria that are having their territorial integrity disrespected, not Israel. 

In 2002 the Arabs said we promise to zealously live up to our side of the letter and spirit of the 242 bargain, giving more than 242 explicitly says, if you will just say you will withdraw fully, and  not hide behind sophistries and revisionist interpretation of SC 242 to not mean "virtually complete withdrawal." (The precise words the US said to Israel in 1967, see Quandt's Peace Process.).  It is Israel and you that are asking "something for nothing."  What do you want, the Arabs to do everything 242 asks first, while Israel does nothing, not even saying it will fully withdraw?  242 links the various things - the idea was to do them at about the same time. You are wrong on the refugee issues, they are in 242 (and of course in GA 194, accepted by all sides long long ago.  The article you link to even speculates, as is common and reasonable, that the Saudi peace plan is signalling a step back from 194.)   Negotiations always go through stages.  First both sides accept a framework, then get down to the nitty-gritty. If Israel accepted the Abdullah/ honest 242 framework the conflict would be over very quickly IMHO.

Therefore, to base a conclusion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is essentially a two party land dispute upon the presumption of Israeli non-compliance  with UN Security Council Resolution 242 is unconvincing. 

Well, this unconvincing view is the view of the overwhelming majority of states and scholars of the Middle East. To all intents and purposes the Arab states are compliant with 242.  Israel is not. It's as if a man (the Arabs) were to walk into a bookstore and offer to buy an encyclopedia. The buyer and seller agree on a price and say its a deal.  Then the seller says, well, I really like the index and volume 3 too, don't think they weren't part of the original deal.  The buyer then says well, the price was for the whole set.  The seller says nothing, which to anyone reasonable means rejection and disagreement. Calling the buyer now noncompliant with the original, admittedly less precise and clear , but perfectly normal bargain  because he refuses to hand over the money, (and he offers 1% more),  before he gets clarification, the terms he always understood to be in force (and which agree with the written opinion of a bystander who wrote up the receipt - the USA - but who now just sits there mumbling when asked for help)  is remarkable.

The Adullah plan was really the Tom Friedman plan.  Adullah after announcing the plan with great fanfare really never persued it too seriously.

Saying that the Arabs are complaint with 242 and Israel is not is not particularly meaningful  Most of the Arab nations have nothing to do with the conflict and  in the end care very little about the Palestinians except as a distraction from their own problems.

Also you do not deal with the real unbalance of risks.  If the Arabs never get there way what is their loss?  They have access to the holy sites of Jerusalem as Jews did not when Jordan control the areas.  If Israel misjudges by following everyones generous suggestions on what they should do they run the risk of lanrge scale destruction and death.

Israel is going to pull out of some of the West Bank and continue building their wall.  Nothing will protect Israel forever but separation leading to peaceful living might be the best for all parties concerned.  It will allow Hamas to prove they can run the Palestinian authority and Fatah will allow themselves to be voted out of office.  Meanwhile the settler movement in Israel will grow less powerful and the constituency for peace will grow not unlike in Ireland. 

Daniel A. Greenbaum

My basis for faith in such a negotiated settlement is at best anecdotal and based on personal conversations with Israeli's and Palestinians.

 

Anecdotal is certainly a sounder base than theoretical.  While I don't think we agree on this issue, I respect that your opinion is the result of serious reflection on these issues on your part. 

However, for example, keeping Ariel and Ma'ale Adummim are absolute deal breakers on the Palestinian side. When I say closer to the 67 borders, I mean VERY close with the exception of the Temple Mount.

 

I think ceding these settlements are "deal-breakers" on the Israeli side.  Ma'aleh Adumim is close to 30,000 people and Ariel has has more than 16,000.  Even under the proposed borders at Taba and in the Abbas-Beilen plan, these settlements (along with Gush Etzion, Modiin Ilit and Givat Ze'ev) are annexed to Israel.      

The Palestinians I talked to want peace. I can't say they are an absolute majority but a peace that saves face and is just I believe will be acceptable.

 

The short-term problem is that no matter what the Palestinian silent majority thinks - the Palestinian electorate has just elected a government with a wholly rejectionist policy towards Israel.  The idea of moving towards an agreement with a Hamas-led PA is as absurd as if Israeli voted in a National Union ticket running on the platform of the sacredness of Judea and Samaria.  It would seem that the best thing the outside world can do is try to ensure that Hamas does not prevent a fair and free election that permits the Palestinian electorate to elect representatives more in line with their preferences on a two-state solution.

Further, while I understand that "saving face" and national dignity are important issues for Palestinians that Israelis and their supporters frequently brush off, such amorphous needs are difficult to address.  What exactly is necessary to "save face" for Palestinians?   The outside consensus is getting back all (or 99%) of what Israel took from Jordan in 1967 would suffice, but that getting 95% of the West Bank would be a grievious national insult.  Given the very real, concrete security concerns for Israel with the 1967 borders (the narrow distance to the sea, airspace of Ben-Gurion airport, the vulnerability of the Jerusalem corridor) there is a limit to how much Israel should be expected to sacrifice in the name of Palestinian dignity.

As far as the refugees, the Palestinians I've talked to realize at this late date, it is unrealistic to expect repatriation. Most of the original refugees are dead. What they need to do to make it acceptable is saving face and finese - something not offered Arafat at Camp David. Money - great gobs of it- will solve the remaining hurt feelings.

 

I am all in favor of great gobs of money going into resettle Palestinian refugees.  If a Palestinian leader actually adopted your proposed solution - letting 1948 refugees have visitation rights but not citizenship, it would be a major breakthrough towards peace.  But right now, outside of Sara Nusseibeh (who does not exactly have a large following), I've heard no influential Palestinian take a reasonable stance on the issue.  The problem is that repatriating all of the refugees to Israel is not only a clever tactic for those who genuinely reject a 2-state solution, but also has become a centerpiece of Palestinian national honor.

I really think Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states would welcome this monkey off their back. Lebanon will be neutral and only Iran and Syria would seriously object. With the rest of the Muslim world and the developed nations behind this initiative, neither Iran or Syria could derail it.

 

Jordan most certaintly wants a settlement given its own, restive Palestinian majority.  Lebanon (outside of Hezbollah) would be ecstatic at any solution that did not involve them settling their Palestinian refugees permanently in Lebanon.

Egypt and the Saudis are another matter.  While Egypt certaintly doesn't want chaos spilling over from Gaza, it is Mubarak's interest to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a slow boil.  the conflict makes Egypt an "essential" party, and gives the regime leverage with which to resist American pressure to democratize and to continue to receive massive foreign aid payments.  Further, a Cold Peace with Israel permits the Egyptian regime to divert popular anger towards an enemy that they do not have to actually risk fighting against. 

For Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian issue plays a similar role - providing distraction from the regime's domestic failures and diplomatic leverage agaisnt the U.S.  It is a very convenient talking point whenever the U.S. wants to press the regime for internal reforms or to crack down on terror to change the subject to the Palestinian issue.  This is why, when Arafat was wavering at Camp David, the Saudis refused to play a constructive role. 

(I recognize that this is the standard Hamiltonian/realist critique on why the US should move away from supporting Israel to a more "honest broker" position.  The problem is that these regimes have no interest in ever declaring the US an "honest broker".  The goalposts will continue to move in order to maintain the diplomatic chip.)

As for the rest of the developed world, only the US and EU have demonstrated any commitment to trying to solve the problem.  Unfortunately, both are in denial of the fact that a Palestinian state is simply not going through democratic election or Israeli withdrawals - but that a major nation-building exercise will be necessary for success.  After Iraq, that appears less likely than ever.