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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6767)	4/19/2004 10:14:20 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

And Bush just destroyed that ambiguity, now didn't he (at least for the US)? He took sides in order to help Sharon pass the withdrawal plan amongst the Likud party. Bush just supported explicitly what Clinton supported implicitly via negotiations: the 2 state solution, with border adjustments. So yes, you can say that he 'destroyed' the ambiguity to help Sharon's initiative, which represents the first major initiative in three years. Sharon is proposing withdrawal from Gaza and a few places in the West Bank. Isn't Israeli withdrawal just what everybody was demanding? That is why Europe is having a tough time condemning this proposal. Only Sharon could do this, and he needed US backing to do it. And thus, the US just became officially associated with the Israeli right wing, when all he had to do was not officially say anything Trust me, this is not the idea of the Israeli right. This is an Israeli center idea. If Bush had said nothing, Sharon probably would have failed, and then we would have weak & failed leadership on both Israeli and Pal sides. That would lead to nothing except more and more violence. But Bush has now committed the American people to Sharon's policies and limited our flexibility to be seen by the entire Arab world as an facilitator and arbitrator We weren't anyway. But actually, this plan offers some hope to Jordan and Egypt, who want something to tamp down the conflict, and hate Arafat just as much as Sharon does. Again, even the Arab condemnations have been muted, because how loudly can they condemn an Israeli withdrawal? Now they'll get it [street cred] by killing Americans. After all, Bush has just officially removed the technical barrier between Israeli and American policy. They are not one and the same, IMO. Didn't Arafat do that already when he blessed the hit of the US agents in Gaza to hand out Fulbrights? Where's the risk? Face it, the Pals were already completely aligned with Saddam, with Hizbullah, with Al Qaeda. Your comments only make sense if there were a moderate Palestinian opposition - but there isn't one. And we've severely diminished our ability to effect influence the nature of any Palestinian state No, we've increased it, by sending the message that permanent intrangience will not pay; in fact, it will have costs, real ones, not mere threats. The Clinton administration, which always came back with more after Palestinian broken agreements and terror, sent the opposite message.