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That is, we are being blackmailed into Sharon's camp, abandoning the Palestininans and our role as hoest broker.

Walt, it is impossible to be an honest broker for a cause and a people who consider honesty a weakness. Our policy should be to show the Islamic world, and especially the Arab world, that honesty will be rewarded with good faith but that treachery will result in total humiliation.

Not my point. I could care less about the Palestinians.

My point is what does it say about the War on Terror? If we've made a fundamental policy shift after 35 years, why?

Is it because Sharon, a very hard ball player indeed, has said, we will share our intelligence and assets to help you better in the WOT, if you support permanent Jewsh settlements in the West Bank?

If we -need- to concede our position as "honest broker", does that indicate that we are in a fix for info?

I don't know, I am asking. I think that at least implicit in why we did this big policy change. It's scary.

Walt

"Is it because Sharon, a very hard ball player indeed, has said, we will share our intelligence and assets to help you better in the WOT, if you support permanent Jewsh settlements in the West Bank?"

Isn't it true that this is just your dogmatic theory of Bush administration's motivation and that there are other plausible interpretations, uncolored by dislike of Sharon?

My point is what does it say about the War on Terror? If we've made a fundamental policy shift after 35 years, why?

I'd say that it has become very obvious that what we have been doing for the past 35 years hasn't been working. At the least, since the 1972 Olympics, our wierd Foggy Bottom driven "policy" of averting our eyes away from Pali terrorism and treating the parties as having equal legitimacy has come back to bite us in the ass big time.

I'd say it is about time for a change, but look at what the change really is. It will work out to be nearly the same thing that clinton tried to get the thug Arafat to agree to back in 99. All Jewish settlements in Gaza will be gone! That's the best land available. Only a few left on the West Bank in strategically vital areas that the Israelis would have never given up under any circumstances. The Palies get all the rest and a nice new wall so they don't ever have to deal with those nasty Jews ever again. They should be overjoyed. They will have their own country. And they will have to run it.

They can have all the fun they want killing each other after Friday prayers or if they a really want to play some games, they can mess with their brothers in Egypt or Jordan and find out what real oppression is.