I guess even Nadine cannot bring herself to argue that Sharon is what we would call "statesman" in most Western democracies.
On the contrary, zonder, I think Sharon is both a statesman and centrist, who has been steering a restrained course, and staying closely allied to the Americans even when it makes his own Likud politicians scream. That's why the Israelis are going to reelect him, he is the only politician they trust right now. Try looking at the actual Prime Minister of 2002, instead of the general in Lebanon in 1982. Of course, he has the advantage of ruling an actual state, with one government and rule of law.
Furthermore, zonder, all these excuses for Arafat, about Oslo not being good enough, occupation, yadda yadda, are just that - excuses. A state is not a patch of territory. A state is first and foremost an idea. If people have the idea, they will build the institutions of a state first and get the territory later. That is what the Zionists did.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, Arafat's ideas center around destroying a state, not building one. That is why he was unable to create a state even when he was given an army, control of all the cities in the West Bank and Gaza, and billions of dollars in aid. |
