Time to Give Up

Condoleezza Rice fails to resolve Palestinian-Israel conflict within a single 24 hour period. I guess it's time to return to six more years of giving up. Alternatively, read Daniel Levy from late last week.

2/19/07 2:10PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

We dont want to return to the policy of six years ago either, which was the policy of pressuring the Palestinians to accept 100,000s of Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Truly, they hate us for our freedom.

Posted by: otto on February 19, 2007 02:20 PM

The sarcasm of this post confuses me. There is an agreement to meet again. So who is giving up?

Posted by: Al on February 19, 2007 02:24 PM

On the campaign trail in '00, John McCain would rail against Bill Clinton's "feckless photo-op foreign policy". But Clinton's committment to hammering out an agreement between Israel and Palestine is several orders of magnitude greater than Bush's. Rice has done multiple fly-bys to the ME, each for a few days at a time, rather than engage in any persistent diplomacy.

Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot on February 19, 2007 02:45 PM

But, but, Bush said "roadmap to peace!" Didn't that solve all the problems?

Posted by: calling all toasters on February 19, 2007 05:21 PM

Which part of "The Palestinians want to destroy the state of Israel" are you having trouble with? I don't condone West Bank settlements, but at the same time, it's hard to make peace with an enemy that really isn't interested in peace in the first place.

Posted by: James Robertson on February 19, 2007 05:55 PM

That's a knife that cuts both ways. Israel won't even let the state of Palestine exist in the first place. The Palestinians are also not a unified group of barbarians. Israel has passed by opportunities to make people like Abbas stronger in Palestine, which has just in turn strengthened Hamas. Such thinking just gets Israel caught in limbo with both terrorism and occupation.

Posted by: Reality Man on February 19, 2007 06:00 PM

I don't condone West Bank settlements, but . . .

Yes yes yes! Hardly any Israeli maximalist bothers with the old pro forma disapproval of the settlements followed by the immediate "but" that whisks the issue safely out of sight any more. Israeli apologists have such complete control of the discourse under the Bush Administration that they don't even bother with the gesture. I get nostalgic sometimes.

Posted by: Jim Henley on February 19, 2007 07:47 PM

Which part of "The Palestinians want to destroy the state of Israel" are you having trouble with?

Well, there's the pary where Israel doesn't even have borders, call the embassy and ask them. Do you mean green line Israel? Where Israeli's live? The ground they run like hawks run a nest of mice? Where is this place you are talking about?

Posted by: Ed Marshall on February 19, 2007 11:13 PM

You mean you don't believe that "establishing a political horizon" is a sign of having a substantive I-P policy???

Does anyone join me in thinking this is the lamest political jargon this side of "he's tan, rested and ready" (Nixon)

Posted by: Richard Silverstein on February 20, 2007 02:07 AM

Does Rice have any successes at all? What does she do anyway? We all know what a great NSA she was, it seems likes she's just as good as SecState.

Posted by: merlallen on February 20, 2007 02:43 AM

James Robertson:

Which part of "The Palestinians want to destroy the state of Israel" are you having trouble with?

The part where the claim is unsupported, and the part where opinion polls show 65 to 70 percent support for a two-state solution among Gaza and West Bank Palestinians.

In an earlier version of this comment I included links to poll data, but it got 'held for approval'.

Posted by: David Tomlin on February 20, 2007 07:17 AM

Daniel Levy:

'It will be difficult to make the Hamas-Fatah deal stick given the intense mutual animosity. Yet this deal offers the best and perhaps only prospect for averting collapse and chaos on the Palestinian side, with all its implications for regional and Israeli security, as well as for facilitating the development of a meaningful Palestinian interlocutor -- with the capacity to deliver -- for peace talks.'

Of course, 'deliver' means 'deliver the abject submission of the Palestinians'. As long as the Israelis are supported by a powerful American lobby, they have no incentive to settle for less.

Posted by: David Tomlin on February 20, 2007 07:25 AM

The Israel bashers on this thread are missing the point. The reason why the 2000 Camp David and Taba negotiations failed is that the Palestinians refused to give up their demand that all Palestinians and their descendants who left what is now Israel in 1948 be allowed to return. Such a demand is no more acceptable to the State of Israel then a similar demand by a German Government that all ethnic Germans and their descendants who left the Sudetenland after WW2 be allowed to return would be acceptable to the Government of the Czech Republic.

Posted by: SLC on February 20, 2007 12:41 PM

All the ethnic Germans who left the Sudetenland after WW2 are in fact entitled to return to the Czech Republic.

There were also many reasons why the Palestinians did not agree to the offers at Taba etc, and the insistence of the Israelis on keeping their racist settler colonies was certainly one of them. Viscous colonialism is a bigotry deeply embedded in Israeli society and outside pressure will be required to oblige them to give it up.

Posted by: otto on February 20, 2007 08:29 PM

Re otto

1. Mr. ottos' claim that ethnic Germans and their descendants are entitled to return to the Czech Republic is a claim that only the Neo-nazis in Germany support. This tells us all we would want to know about Mr. otto.

2. Mr. otto is seriously in error in his claims about the Camp David/Taba failure. Contrary to Mr. ottos' claims, the deal-breaker was the refusal of the Palestinians to give up their demand for return. Jerusalem and the settlements were minor issues which would have been quickly resolved if the return issue had been resolved.

Posted by: SLC on February 21, 2007 08:38 AM

I'll just stick to number 1, since you add nothing new on number 2.

Since Germany and the Czech Republic are both in the European Union, it is a matter of fact that ethnic Germans and their descendants are entitled to return to the Czech Republic, just as anyone in Denmark can move to Ireland. (There are a few little wrinkles to do with countries which have recently joined the EU, but that's the basic position even now).

Posted by: otto on February 21, 2007 08:53 AM

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