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.
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.
I grant all that, and I hope you are right.
I don't recall much discussion beforehand of this policy change.
In a way, it may be throwing down the gage to the Islamic world. "We're against you now, all of you."
Walt
But they aren't and they will never be. Notwithstanding their obligatory prevarications at "peace talk" time, they want the Israelis dead and gone forever. All of them. They've made this more clear than Hitler did. Nothing less will satisfy them.