I agree with much of MJ's post, except this:

The administration perceives the Syrians as desperate to escape from the corner they have finally found themselves in over Lebanon and do not want to see Israel provide an escape hatch.

What corner? Assad is in the driver's seat. The US is sinking in Iraq and badly needs Syria's help (hence the visits by congressional delegations), the March 14 movement is on the ropes. Lebanon is erupting once again. Yes, the Hariri tribunal is a thorn in his side, but right now Assad is not in a position where he needs to make concessions.

Has there ever been examples in history where talks themselves were bad?
I don't mean talks like Munich where a gang got together to discuss dismembering a nation not in the room.
But talks by the parties to a dispute.
Why would Israel be hurt by talking to Hamas. It built them up for years without talking. Why not sit in the same room?
If you reach an impasse, you walk out.

In fact you can take that one step further. As Northern Ireland has shown once again, it's when the parties on the opposite extremes start talking that genuine peace breaks out. Peace, if it ever comes, will be between Bibi and Mashaal, not Olmert and Abbas. (Which is also perhaps why it'll never come...)

That gentle soul, Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, has a different approach to the problem:

If they [Palestinians] don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.

He learned his religion from dad, former Sephardi chief Rabbi.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1180527966693&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Rosenberg is as delusional as ever.

Except that daddy sephardi chief rabbi

ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.

davai: if you want to justify mass murder, you're going to have to try a little harder.

What utter nonsense.

The end of the conflict or at least America’s resuming the role of honest broker would deal a major blow to those efforts and would be one of the best weapons against the Jihadists.

While America was an "honest broker" (whatever that means), the World Trade Center was attacked, US embassies in Africa were blown up, a US warship was attacked, and bin Laden was planning 9/11. It is naive, at best, to think that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would in any way diminsh the Jihadist war on the US.

The fact is that the I-P conflict is an excuse. And if you get rid of this excuse, there will be another one. The Arab thugocracies need the I-P conflict to continue in order to distract their people from their own misrule. The Saudi plan is nothing except the Arabs saying to Israel, if you surrender to all our demands, then we will no longer make war on you - despite the fact that no Arab state has made war on Israel in 30 some years.

We have seen the "peace" amd "normalization" that the Arabs offer; Egyptian state-run press is one of the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel of any Arab state. Egypt regularly conducts war games for war with Israel. And Egypt tacitly - if not actively - supports Palestinian terrorists by allowing the smuggling of arms into Gaza. Yes, Egypt hasn't attacked Israel in 30 years; but neither has Syria. Maybe it is the fact that Damascus is within Israeli long-range artillery range and not a peace agreement that is important.

As I pointed out in MJ's previous thread, he along with his fellow "progressives" of the so-called "peace camp" are simply another versino of the Neo-Cons whom he denounced in that thread. Both, coming out of the Left, believe that in order to reach Utopia, everyone in the world should think like they do, and this should be done, either through persuasion, "political correctness" or outright force. MJ's so-called "Peace Camp", as you see in this current piece of his, believes that everyone in the world is reasonable, wants peace and progress, and if we can just sit down together with them and make concessions to them, they will agree to "peace" on reasonable terms.
Well, here is an article from the New York Times about Iraq, and how everyone there is willing to practically commit suicide there, all for the pleasure of getting vengeance against their ancient enemies.
I post this because it is relevant to the Arab/Israeli conflict and the myth that MJ's camp keeps purveying "that all Israel has to do is make concessions and keep talking" and then everything will work out.

BTW-this does not mean that I believe the Israeli/Arab conflict means endless war, abosolutely not, but the violence won't end until Israel REFUSES to make more political concessions (as opposed to economic agreements) and stands on its own rights.

-------------------------------------------

June 3, 2007
The World
Iraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD

PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.

The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.

It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.

Most famously it happened to a former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, who tried to flee after a military coup in 1958 by scurrying through eastern Baghdad dressed as a woman. He was shot dead. His body was disinterred and hacked apart, the bits dragged through the streets. In later years, Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party crushed their enemies with the same brand of brutality.

“Other Arabs say, ‘You are the country of sahel,’ ” Razzaq said. “It has always been that way in Iraq.”

But in this war, the moment of sahel has been elusive. No faction — not the Shiite Arabs or Sunni Arabs or Kurds — has been able to secure absolute power, and that has only sharpened the hunger for it.

Listen to Iraqis engaged in the fight, and you realize they are far from exhausted by the war. Many say this is only the beginning.

President Bush, on the other hand, has escalated the American military involvement here on the assumption that the Iraqi factions have tired of armed conflict and are ready to reach a grand accord. Certainly there are Iraqis who have grown weary. But they are not the ones at the country’s helm; many are among some two million who have fled, helping leave the way open for extremists to take control of their homeland.

“We’ve changed nothing,” said Fakhri al-Qaisi, a Sunni Arab dentist turned hard-line politician who has three bullets lodged in his torso from a recent assassination attempt. “It’s dark. There will be more blood.”

I first met Mr. Qaisi in 2003 at a Salafi mosque in western Baghdad, when the Sunni Arab insurgency was gaining momentum. He articulated the Sunnis’ simmering anger at being ousted from power. That fury has blossomed and is likely only to grow, as religious Shiite leaders and their militias become more entrenched in the government and as Kurds in the north push to expand their region and secede in all but name.

Caught in the middle of the civil war are the Americans. To Iraq’s factions, they are the weakest of all the armed groups in one crucial respect: their will is ebbing and their time here is limited. That leaves Iraqis more motivated than ever to cling to their weapons, preparing for what many see as an inevitable plunge into the abyss.

“Everyone — the Sunni, the Shia — is playing the waiting game,” an Iraqi leader told me over dinner at his home in the Green Zone. “They’re waiting out the Americans. Everyone is using time against you.”

Much seemed different in April 2003, when the Americans pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square and allowed Iraqis to drag it through the streets. It looked like an act of sahel at the time, but the Americans failed to establish total control, as Iraqi history says a conqueror must.

Four years on, Sunni and Shiite attacks against the Americans are expanding. There is little love among Iraqi civilians for the troops, though many fear the anarchy that could follow an American withdrawal.

“I’m still sticking by my principle, which is against the occupation,” Mr. Qaisi said in an interview here while visiting from his new home in Tikrit. “I’m Iraqi, and I think the Iraqi people should have this principle. We have the right to defend our country as George Washington did.”

As long as I have known him, Mr. Qaisi has rejected the idea that the Sunni Arabs are the minority in this country. To him and many other Sunni Arabs, the borders of Iraq do not delineate the boundaries of the war. The conflict is set, instead, against the backdrop of the entire Islamic world, in which demography and history have always favored the Sunnis. That sense of entitlement is fed by the notion that Iraq’s Shiite Arabs are just proxies for Iran’s Persian rulers.

For the Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraqis, the unalloyed hostility of the Sunni Arabs only reinforces a centuries-old sense of victimhood. So the Shiite militias grow, stoking vengeance. Through force of arms, and backed by the Americans and Iran, the religious Shiites intend to dominate the country entirely, taking what they believe was stripped from them when their revered leader Hussein was murdered in the desert of seventh-century Mesopotamia.

It was at the site of that ancient bloodletting, Karbala, that I twice witnessed the intense Shiite ache for righteousness and triumph. In early 2004, thousands of young fighters in the Mahdi Army, the militia of the nationalist Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, fought and died in a fevered uprising against the Americans. Last March, the same zealotry showed in a different way, as millions of Shiite pilgrims marched to Karbala’s shrines to commemorate the death of Hussein. They went despite relentless attacks by Sunni Arab suicide bombers. To them, it was all part of the unending war.

“No country in the world is fighting such terrorism,” said Adel Abdul Mehdi, an Iraqi vice president and leader in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a powerful Shiite party, on the day he made his pilgrimage. “Every time we give more martyrs, we are more determined. This is a big battle, there is no such battle in the world.”

The Shiites have waited centuries for their moment on the throne, and the war is something they are willing to tolerate as the price for taking power, said the Iraqi leader who had invited me to dinner in the Green Zone. “The Shia say this is not exceptional for them, this is normal,” he said.

The belief of the Shiites that they must consolidate power through force of arms is tethered to ever-present suspicions of an impending betrayal by the Americans. Though the Americans have helped institute the representative system of government that the Shiites now dominate, they have failed to eliminate memories of how the first President Bush allowed Saddam Hussein to slaughter rebelling Shiites in 1991. Shiite leaders are all too aware, as well, of America’s hostility toward Iran, the seat of Shiite power, and of its close alliances with Sunni Arab nations, especially Saudi Arabia.

“One day we’ll find that we’ve returned back to 1917,” said Sheik Muhammad Bakr Khamis al-Suhail, a respected Shiite neighborhood leader in Baghdad, referring to the installation here of a Sunni Arab monarchy by the British after World War I. “The pressure of the Arab countries on the American administration might push the Americans to choose the Sunni Arabs.”

Sitting in the cool recesses of his home, the white-robed sheik said he was a moderate, a supporter of democracy. It is for people like him that the Americans have fought this war. But the solution he proposes is not one the Americans would easily embrace.

“In the history of Iraq, more than 7,000 years, there have always been strong leaders,” he said. “We need strong rulers or dictators like Franco, Hitler, even Mubarak. We need a strong dictator, and a fair one at the same time, to kill all extremists, Sunni and Shiite.”

I was surprised to hear those words. But perhaps I was being naïve. Looking back on all I have seen of this war, it now seems that the Iraqis have been driving all along for the decisive victory, the act of sahel, the day the bodies will be dragged through the streets.

Forgot an important item:

Additionally, as the New York Times reported this week, Al Qaedaist-like cells in Gaza are moving to supplant Hamas in Gaza as popular frustration and anger at the Hamas/Fatah unity government grows.

Nice scare tactic Mr. MJ Bush!

After reading the comments on this and every other Israel/Palestine threads I sometimes close my eyes and wish G-d would reach down and "smite" the whole region. That way we could start over fresh. Both Jews and Arabs have perfected their victim status and jeolously refuse to let go, regardless of the consequence to themselves and others.

Someone above mentioned that Al Qaeda is only a threat to Israel. That is clearly wrong. Al Qaeda is certainly a danger to the Shiite Hezbollah. They have also denounced Hamas. Also what makes you think that these groups are not vying for power.

A peace deal with Syria is both good for itself and would go a long way in defanging both Hezbollah and Hamas. Both these groups get much of their weapons, money and political support from Syria. Any deal with Syria presumably would include and end to their helping Israel's enemies.

It is amusing to me to see not one mention of the Lebaese government shelling the Palestinian camp in northern Lebanon in order to get a group of extremists. The fighting was so fearce that aid workers could not initially get into the camp. If this was Israel the denounciatons and posturing would be endless.

Then the is the matter of the BBC reporter grabed in Gaza and now held for weeks. Saeb Erekat has even suggested the PA should use force to try to get him.

Israel ought to talk to everyone since it never hurts to see what the other side is looking for but why no mention of the virtually daily killing of Palestians by fellow Palestinians? Where is the stand against the daily shelling of Sderot?

We do not need people who are senative so much as people who are a lot more honest. The Arab World and the Palestinians are a mess. Israel ought to seek peace with any and all parties as long as it will not result in more dead Israealis, but to believe the Arabs are in a position to make deals with Israel is a big a fanatasy as believing that removing Saddem, alone, would bring Democracy to Iraq.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

"someone" reads the Israeli media and that of the surrounding region in order to try to understand the current dynamics and takes the pronouncements of the various rogue AQ wannabes at their word when they declare that attacking the "Zionist entity" is their primary objective.

It should be a bit worrisome to "someone" like Daniel Greenberg that there are reports that some of these "global jihadists" are veterans of the violence in Iraq. But, that requires that "someone" abandon his dearly held notions about who poses a real and growing threat to Israel.

Fortunately for Israel, there are those among her security experts who care more about the prospect of radical Islamists employing their lessons learned than flailing at the rotting corpses of dead horses from the classic vantage point of the ostrich.

If "someone" wants to discuss Lebanon, BBC reporters, etc, I suggest that "someone" start blogging about his issues.

It is amusing to me to see not one mention of the Lebaese government shelling the Palestinian camp in northern Lebanon in order to get a group of extremists.

Daniel, I've been struck by the silence on this too. I've been following it in the news, and there are a lot of civilians being injured or killed by the shelling (as well as militants). It deserves more attention. It also raises a lot of interesting questions about the status of Palestinians in places like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc. A solution to the Palestinian problem will require a regional agreement, not just an agreement between the principals. The inhabitants of these refugee camps will need to be integrated somewhere--but where?

The silence on this issue is most likely due to the unbelievably confusing morass that comprises the current situation in Lebanon. Trying to make sense of it beyond the "Syria did it" cries from the usual suspects is formidable and beset with contradictions and complexity.

The disgraceful treatment of Palestian refugees in border states is another can of worms that starts with the establishment of Israel and involves Arab nationalism, Cold War geopolitical calculations and on and on and on. A little discussed aspect of the recent Arab overtures was a proposal that some Palestinian refugee populations in neighboring states would be rehabilitated by massive infusions of cash to those regimes agreeable to improving their llives. Syria wasn't mentioned. Supposedly, Palestinians who want to return to the WB would be allowed to do so although it's unclear whether the PA would receive any aid in order to facilitate the influx.

Haven't we already established the fact that true peace with the Palestinians is not what the Israeli leaders truly seek?

Since its inception, the new Israel has always formulated policy around the Palestinian problem. Indeed, the Military Industrial Complex is as much alive there as it is here in the United States.

Indeed, a sustainable peace with the Palestinians is likely no more favorable in the minds of Israel's ruling elite as peace in the Middle East would be to the Bush administration.

They need these conflicts to maintain their hard line policies. And to fund them.

Reaching a peace with Syria, though, is something that would naturally be appealing to Israel for the reasons MJ lists in his post.

Aside from its tactical importance, it would allow Olmert & Co. to show the population that they are doing something.

Here is a link to site the illustrates the confusion that typifies the mess in Lebanon. Note that the blogger blames nearly everyone involved and freely employs dark sarcasm when he discusses the situation.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/

Davai says that Jews don't indulge in victimhood! Right. But my parents still get their checks from the Germans (reparations). Germany had to pay 4 billion in overall reparations to Israel (a state that did not exist when the Nazis committed their crimes). In the past decade the Jewish organizations sued the Swiss (the Swiss!) for treating abandoned bank accounts by holocaust victims the same way all other abandoned accounts are treated. The US government was lobbied to hand over, for free, a building on the mall for a holocaust museum. New York, California and Maryland have special tax breaks for holocaust survivors, etc, etc.
Every other group (African Americans, Palestinians, Indians,Al Sharpton) have learned the victimhood game from my people who invented it.

They are called refugee camps because they are, in fact, refugee camps.

What the difference between a avr camp in Jordan and a city or vilage in Jordan. Can you tell a diffrence if you don't know in advance?

You can tell me all about JORDAN, davai, and be sure to provide some proof to back up your claims about Palestinians in JORDAN.

Correction,
We didn't stuck with the state of permanent victimhood. We were victims of terrible crimes against us for 2000 years, and still we were trying make lemonade from lemon.

There is nothing prevent Palestinians in Gaza to build another Singapure, except victimhood mentality.

BTW, I'm not saying because crimes againts Jews, Jews are allowed to kill Arabs, so please don't go there.

Then go find your own answers.

So, I guess you have no clue what's the diff beween a refugee camp and typical city in Jordan?

Very profound statement

Which goes to prove that the Arabs don't hate Israel because of the supposed "suffering" of the Palestinians, but rather because they feel "humiliation" at the exitence of a dhimmi state in the heart of the "dar Al-Islam"-The realm of Islam. Muslims are taught that ultimately they will rule the world, and when a dhimmi people like the Jews, or the Christians in Lebanon have sovereignity in their turf, they view it as an abberation, a violation of the natural order. Because of the innate tribalism of the Arab world (read "The Closed Circle" by David Pryce-Jones), they are indifferent to what happens to those belonging to clans outside their own. That is why there was or is NEVER an outcry against atrocities Arabs commit to each other. Are there any protests in the Arab world, or in countries in Europe with large Arab populations against the horrors Arabs are doing to each other in Iraq or Somalia? Were there ever Arab protests against the civil wars in Lebanon or Algeria. Was there ever protests anywhere by Arabs against Saddam Husseins tyranny? No. Just indifference.

The treaty Israel signed with Egypt has nothing to do with "peace", and the fact that there has not been a full-scale war between Egypt and Israel since it was signed is NOT because there is a treaty, but simply because Egypt hasn't wanted a war. If Egypt wanted to go to war, they would simply tear up the treaty. There is NO peace treaty between Syria and Israel, either, and yet there has been no full-scale war between Israel and Syria during the same period. The ONLY reason Egypt even bothers to maintain the pretence of the agreement is because if they didn't, they might lose the $2 Billion per year the US gives them. Israel is potrayed in the state-controlled Egypt media as Egypt's main enemy, and Egypt is one of the major world purveyors of anti-Jewish propaganda.
Egypt fights its war aganst Israel by proxy, by arming the Gaza Strip terrorists. ALL weapons that enter Gaza cross the border with Egypt and you can be darned sure that Mubarak knows exactly what is going in there. Egypt's proxy war with Israel is the same as Syria's with Israel, which is fought using Hizbullah.
The Israel-Egypt "peace agreement" is a fraud.
Jordan, on the other hand, keeps the border with Israel quiet, in their own interest, but they did even before their agreement with Israel, so again, peace treaties DO NOT make peace, government's decide if they want peace or war without regard to scraps of paper they may or may not sign.

Yes it was the Palestinian's own fault that Israel ethnically cleansed them. Bad Palestinians!

So, what's your advice for Palestinians?
What's their best stategy to survive this
"GENOCIDE" ? Do you think Hamas "resistance" in Gaza is helpful for stopping "GENOCIDE"?
Looking back, could they do something diffrent
in 1948, 1967, 2000 or any other year to be today in better position.

"Your insistence on shifting the blame onto others is patheticly transparent."

I'm not shifting blame. Let's agree for the sake of argument that Israel is very powerful evil.

What's the best way for Palestinians do deal with this evil ?

Which goes to prove that the Arabs don't hate Israel because of the supposed "suffering" of the Palestinians... so its OK for Israel to make them suffer? LOL!!!

Your triablistic mindset is showing again.

BTW I didn't hear of any demonstrations in, say, Mexico over the events in, say, Chile. Those darned Hispanics! They're so indifferent to each other's suffering, those Hispanics!

LOL!!!

Actually, I suspect that Israel needs external enemies in order to keep itself in one piece. The internal contradictions of a "democracy" that is based on a mythological religious identity and which was artifically created - perhaps all too much to contain if it wasn't for distraction and rallying point provided by the external enemies. Who shot Rabin? No a palestinian.

No, you first explain to why Israel shouldn't give back the Palestinains their lands instead of expecting the Palestinians to turn Gaza into Singapore. Why don't YOU go build your own singapore somewhere else, free of US tax-payer money and Palestinian blood?

What the difference between a avr camp in Jordan and a city or vilage in Jordan. Can you tell a difference in architecture or construction if you don't know in advance where is camp whre is city?

"They do. They're not going to become Lebanese or Jordanian and melt away into cities in those countries. "

Why not?
BTW, How Palestinians do in US?
Do they still live in refugee camps or they melt away into cities?

In case all of you guys haven't noticed, Putin just restarted the cold war.  This battle you are having is now very very small potatoes.  Forget it.  We have new problems.

"Thank you, first, for admitting the evil."
I'm not admitting Israeli evil. I'm accepting that Abdull and you think that Israel is THE EVIL.

"In the case of the Palestinians, when Evil sets out to commit genocide against you, there is no compromise, you must fight it tooth and nail."

I see, Palestinians in Gaza today have two choices.
Stop fighting and acccept Evil Israel who stole most of Palestinian land, then using International help start building Singapure in Gaza or continue to fight tooth and nail.
Your answer is "fight it tooth and nail".
Thank you for clarity.

I,m sick of all the quibbeling. While settlements on the WB grow. I think that if the Palestinians were armed equally well as the Israelis there would be more desire to negotiate on the Israeli part. Some of the Israeli's are bigots of the worst kind, convinced of their own superiority, viewing and treating the Palestinians as animals ( I have heard them talking), racism and bigotry of this kind needs to be quashed and punished! Better arms for the Palestinians may be the ticket for forcing Israel to deal with this type of people.
Also, I am NOT convinced that Israel has a place in the Middle East, why don't we put them in Utah with the Mormons? And take away their nuclear toys.

Sorry, appeals to architecture won't save you from the fact that Palestinians Exist.

What makes you think that the palestinians won't "Deal with this evil" for 2000 years too?
I'm asking you how do you suggest Palestinians deal with evil for the next 2000 years.

And what in your opinion Palestinians should do
untill such time arrives and Israel will be
"held internationally liable for their crimes against humanity and genocide" ?

I'm not asking you what they could do to make life easier for Israel,
I'm asking you what they could do to make life easier for themselves.

They are not camps they are cities.
Camp and city are not political terms they are architectural terms.

But refugee camp is a political term, and architecture isn't relevant to its definition.