Victor Davis Hanson: Process but No Peace

Policy Review ^ | December 2004/January 2005 | Victor Davis Hanson

[quidnunc]

Dennis Ross
The Missing Peace. The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004) 840 pages

For some 13 years under three presidents, Dennis Ross served honorably as a U.S. envoy to the Middle East, and thus knew intimately the disappointments of the Madrid, Oslo, Paris, Wye, and Camp David protocols. Indeed, Ross had the unenviable task of reconciling the various proposed solutions of an exasperated Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, George H.W. Bush, James Baker, Bill Clinton, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright with those of most of the key Israelis — Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, and Sharon — while dealing, of course, with the perennial specter of Yassir Arafat. Leaders come, leaders go; but the late Arafat always remained — recalcitrant in his 1960s headdress and holster, his former Marxist rhetoric superseded by trendy public allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism, and resplendent in the bemedaled uniform of a general without either an army or a single victory.

Indeed, the billionaire gangster Arafat emerges as the antagonist in Ross’s account of the endless search for a comprehensive Middle East peace. He peeps out on every page predictably obstructing each new initiative that followed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the PLO support for Saddam in the Gulf War, failed intifadas, and the election victories of the Israeli left. That the Europeans and many weary Israelis were eager to empower Arafat as a serious leader, despite his military impotence and rampant corruption, is perhaps understandable given his tribal connections on the West Bank and his long terrorist activity. But why the Americans ever recanted and worked with this pathological criminal remains unanswered by Ross’s 800 pages of fascinating, but ultimately depressing, detail.…

-snip-

[quidnunc]

FYI

[stylin_geek]

Bump for later read.

[Cicero]

Interesting review. But it would take a terrible masochist to read an 800-page book about such a miserable tale of corruption, delusion, deception, and failure.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[RAY]

While George W. Bush gets few high marks from Dennis Ross for his relative distance from the minutiae that comprise this 800-page book, his larger post-9/11 vision of democratizing the Middle East may do what thousands of shuttle missions by the dutiful and honest Ross could not — if the virus of democracy let loose in Afghanistan and Iraq finally infects the West Bank. After all, the real problem in the Middle East has never been just a few thousand acres of disputed land. Instead, as was true during the Cold War, strife arises from the complete absence on one side of a legitimate government — as well as the subsidized mythologies of Palestinians that they could win from the Jews through suicide murder the honor, prosperity, and victory that they could never otherwise obtain through outright war or endemic tribal dictatorship.

Will these people ever come to their senses - probably not!

[Stultis]

resplendent in the bemedaled uniform of a general without either an army or a single victory

Hey, that's not fair. He often had forces at his command. In Lebanon for instance they scored victories, and inflicted high, um, "casualties," against many an unarmed village.

[SirLurkedalot]

BTTT

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out

[alfa6]

To quote Teddy Roosevelt "BULLY"

Regards and Thanks

alfa6 ;>}

[Valin]

A good definition of insainity.
Doing the samething over and over and over and expecting a different result

[Valin]

I've recently come to the opinion that the problem with all these mideast peace proccesses is they are putting the cart before the horse. You cannot make peace (real peace) with a dictatorship, and the PA is a dictatorship, always has been. How do you make peace when only one side really wants it?