No kidding. The search for a solution is like the search for El Doradao – ain’t gonna happen. In fact, in my opinion, the Middle East suffers from too many negotiators, special envoys, etc. who might mean well but only feed into the Arab delusion that someone else will do the dirty wok of actually negotiating for them. The Arabs start off with maximalist demands and never, ever step down. Besides, the Palestinian conflict is not now nor ever was the most important problem in the Middle East or the reasons for wars – the most important reason why there is no peace is Arab/Islamic irredentism i.e. the refusal to acknowledge another nation that is different from them. Obama with his Messianic pretensions combined with his overly high opinion of his own abilities, will be just another in a long line of failed would-be peace makers.
Haaretz by the way, in my opinion, is a post Zionist newspaper (that is why anti Semite Andrew Sullivan likes to link to it a lot). In addition to their horrrible left-wing commentators (Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Akiva Eldar) it attracts like fleas to camel dung a whole lot of Israel haters and anti Semites (check out the comments section at the end of the article).
by Moshe Arens
“I’ll be honest with you, this is just really hard. This is as intractable a problem as you get … We overestimated our ability to persuade them … If we had anticipated some of these problems, we might not have raised expectations as high,” U.S. President Barack Obama confided to Time magazine last week, regarding his efforts to advance the peace process in the Middle East. He is clearly disappointed, but insists he will continue to work on a two-state solution.
It is not just that, during this past year, Obama has learned what old Middle East hands have known all along – that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an intractable problem – but also that intractable problems do not easily get solved, if they are at all soluble, even when the president of the United States weighs in with full force.
It is hard to be optimistic regarding the continuing U.S. efforts in this matter, since the president seems to have his mind set on the two-state solution, “in which Israel is secure and the Palestinians have sovereignty.” That aim has been pursued by many ever since the ill-fated Oslo Accords signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat in Washington, D.C. almost 17 years ago. Whereas there might have been some reason to expect at the time that Arafat, who seemed to enjoy the support of most of the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as well as in much of the Arab world, would be able to implement any peace agreement he might eventually sign with Israel – it turned out that he had no intentions of reaching such an agreement, and those who knew the Palestinian leader realized even then that he had no such intentions. It was another case of wishful thinking being applied to attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There were many more to follow over the years. The continuing infatuation with the idea of a two-state solution is at the bottom of most of these naive dreams. The idea seems eminently appealing: In a Solomonic move, western Palestine is to be divided between Israel and the Palestinians, and Jews and Arabs will live peacefully ever after.
Tags: Haaretz, Moshe Arens
