And again.
1. Arafat has, as you say, jerked us around for 30 years because the Israelis gave him the conditions to do so, one reason, by continuing to occupy the West Bank and Gaza. Two turning points here.
I recently read a portion of Oren's book on the 67 war. Found it interesting the number of influential Israeli leaders who called on Israel, at that point, to not occupy the West Bank. Second, turning point. Peres has said that the big mistake with the Oslo agreements was not going straight to a Palestinian state. Either turning point would either have made Arafat a different politician with a different agenda or have put forward different leadership.
2. The problem with getting to the disease is the wonderful fact of lack of leverage. We do have leverage on the human rights arguments; we don't have leverage to overthrow the Egyptian and Saudi governments and would, certainly, only make matters worse if we tried. That way of getting at the disease is like the Vietnam argument. Gonna save the patient, even if we kill the patient.
3. Read Doran's article that is now linked from the thread's header page. He talks, very clearly and precisely, about the relations between Hezbollah and Al Q., the different strategies, different contexts, different reasons to think about the issues they raise. We need much more fine grained thinking about this. Exactly the point raised by Brzenziski (spellling) in today's NYTimes.
4. Stay on this thread long enough and you can run that seminar with ease. If it will comfort you, I'll trip over from Austin where I'll be for a period in October and debate the issues with you in front of the seminar. ;-) |
