You are so defensive, you have such a severe case of Siege Mentality, you can't see that I am being even-handed. I have (very consistently) said that neither side wants peace, neither side is following the road map, neither side is keeping promises. If I talk mainly about Israeli bad faith, it is because nobody (on this thread, anyway) disputes the fact of Palestinian bad faith. Including me.
Glad to hear the last point. But your "evenhandedness" practices a false equivalence; failing to see the difference between Israeli and Palestinian societies, you paint them with the same brush. You're quite wrong in saying "neither side wants peace". If by peace, you mean a two-state solution, the great majority of Israelis do want it. Do the Palestinians want it, that's the question? Polls say only about half do (the rest are gunning for the destruction of Israel), and of course the PA is not a democracy. Arafat doesn't want it; he's proved it by past decisions. Palestinian strategic decisions (what Maurice calls their "head-hacking propensities") also strongly imply that they don't want a state unless they also get a warrant to keep killing Jews. This the Israelis will not grant.
You have a point that neither side is crazy about the roadmap. However, there's a big difference between Israeli promises, which they are able & expected to perform, and Palestinian promises, which they are not able & not expected to perform. The Israelis are more careful about making promises.
Most of the stuff you want to Israel to do in terms of ripping down settlements is stuff they never promised to do, anywhere. Sharon promised to rip down certain outposts illegal by Israeli law. He never promised to rip down everything built in the territories for the last two years. You may not approve but it's not a good reason to talk about Israeli "bad faith". Sharon doesn't like the roadmap, and has officially stated lots of "reservations". But what has he promised to do under it that he has not done? And he can truthfully say that he's still waiting for the Palestinian step 1, a cease-fire.
If body-counts are a good proxy for measuring insanity levels.
There're not, actually. Wars can be started for sane or insane reasons, and the body count won't tell the difference. |
