Thomas L. Friedman’s warning This is Not a Test about the urgency of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute echoes the growing (and understandable) concern of advocates of a two-state solution following the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Yet Mr. Friedman misstates the case: the Israelis have already formed ‘centrist, national unity’ governments (as well as leftist and rightist ones) committed to implementing a two-state solution. While Israel’s ‘fanatical’ Jewish settlers and their enablers in Jerusalem have made that implementation more difficult, the bulk of the Israeli public has repeatedly endorsed politicians who support the removal of the most problematic settlements.
A much larger obstacle is the persistent lack of a credible Palestinian partner, an obstacle which has only grown since Yasser Arafat walked out of Camp David in 2002. With Hamas firing rockets into Israel from the ruins of (forcibly) evacuated settlements in the Gaza Strip, the true ‘window-closers’ on the two-state solution seems tragically clear.
Published on SlantRight
1 comment:
Unfortunately, the two state solution is already a lead letter. It isn't five 'til midnight, as Friedman suggests, it is 12:05 in the morning, and total war is already an historical inevitability. It was made so in part by the Israeli failure to destroy Hezbollah in Lebannon and anby her failure to destroy Hamas in Gaza, more recently.
Friedman is seeing all the pieces of the puzzle, but he's far too optimistic becaause he still seems to want to believe that there is some sort of hope. Lets be realistic. Fatah is not going to be rebuilt, Hamas is not going to merge with Fatah, the Iranians are not going to talk to the Israelis with any intention of negotiation away her nuclear arms program, and the Israelis are not going to simply hide behind walls from arab rockets and suicide bombers.
What we have is an unavoidable recipe for the total destruction of the so-called Palestinians.
We Americans are late comers to this old struggle, and most of us barely have any real understanding of it, but we had better get ready for war, because war is coming in a big way.
Post a Comment