June 28, 2007
The Palestine follies
Jeffrey D. Sachs in The Jordan Times:
American foreign policy in the Middle East experienced yet another major setback this month, when Hamas, whose Palestinian government the United States had tried to isolate, routed the rival Fateh movement in Gaza. In response, Israel sealed Gaza’s borders, making life even more unbearable in a place wracked by violence, poverty and despair.
It is important that we recognise the source of America’s failure, because it keeps recurring, making peace between Israel and Palestine more difficult. The roots of failure lie in the US and Israeli governments’ belief that military force and financial repression can lead to peace on their terms, rather than accepting a compromise on terms that the Middle East, the rest of the world and, crucially, most Israelis and Palestinians, accepted long ago.
For 40 years, since the Six-Day War of 1967, there has been one realistic possibility for peace: Israel’s return to its pre-1967 borders, combined with viable economic conditions for a Palestinian state, including access to trade routes, water supplies and other essential needs.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 01:08 PM | Permalink
Comments
And which compromise would that be that the whole world deciced on a long time ago?
Get real Mr. Sachs. Wonders never cease.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Jun 28, 2007 4:28:16 PM
Mr. Sachs, like most of the well meaning commentators on the Israel/Palestinian imbroglio makes the following mistake. He refuses to take the Hamas leadership at their word that the only solution acceptable to them is one in which the Government of Israel agrees to go out of business. He then assumes that if the Government of Israel would only be less beastly toward the Palestinians, the Hamas leadership would see the light and revise their demands. The realists, however, have concluded that the Hamas leadership says what they mean and means what they say. They should be taken seriously, rather then treated as somehow like small children who are just blowing off steam.
Posted by: SLC | Jun 28, 2007 5:06:43 PM
"For the past 10 years, the greatest practical barrier to peace has been Israel’s failure to carry out any true withdrawal to its 1967 borders, owing to the political weight of hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank and the religious and secular communities that support them."
Barefaced lies like this really are the choicest way of presenting the Palestinian case:
FACT 1 - 1979-82 Israel dismantled settlements and withdrew from thousands of square kms of occupied territory in Sinai in return for a peace treaty.
FACT 2 - 1993-2001 Israeli forces withdrew from Palestinian towns and extensive territories to comply with the 1993 Oslo accords
FACT 3 - 2005 Israel displaced thousands of its settlers from the Gaza Strip, leaving it entirely in Palestinian control.
Israel's willingness to withdraw in exchange for 'a secure and lasting peace' has been proven time and again. To claim otherwise is to distort the facts.
Most of the Israeli public, including both Likud and Labor supporters, would love to withdraw from most West Bank areas, but withdrawals 2 and 3 have been interpreted by Palestinians as signs of weakness and they have stepped up terrorism and rabid indoctrination of their youth. In 1993, the Israeli Right were seriously afraid that the Palestinians would honor the agreements and 'behave themselves' for a five-year period, taking the oppertunity to build their 'nation' and economy. After a 5-year quiet period, no Israeli government could have withstood the pressure to withdraw from all the territories. The Right needn't have worried - the Palestinians were engaged in building arms and explosives stockpiles, not in nation building.
Posted by: aguy109 | Jun 28, 2007 5:45:33 PM
Re aguy
Mr. aguy has told it like it is. I would not call Mr. Sachs a liar necessarily. Just a deluded do-gooder.
Posted by: SLC | Jun 28, 2007 7:25:31 PM
Mr. aguy,
That was a very neat little trick you pulled off there. The reality is that Israel has moved around half a million settlers into the West Bank since 1968. The rate only increased after Oslo.
Sinai isn't the West Bank, and the 6,000 fanatics in Gaza are not in the West Bank. The withdrawals from the West Bank towns where Israel maintained control of everything around the towns. It doesn't matter if the wardens withdraw from inside the prison, it's still a prison. The half a million settlers in the West Bank are what has not been removed and will not be removed.
Nice try.
Posted by: saifedean | Jun 28, 2007 7:54:26 PM
So according to the supporters of the hardline Israeli right (not by any means supporters of "Israel" as a whole, since a lot of Israelis are not hardline rightists), there is no hope of a settlement of the conflict. Just keep your heel on the Palestinians forever.
This only reinforces my long-held belief: that this conflict will not be settled (like the IRA-Brit and the South African crises were), at least not for the next century or so.
Posted by: JonJ | Jun 28, 2007 9:50:39 PM
It's refreshing to hear someone in the mainstream approaching this situation rationally. It is worth noting that Sachs correctly identifies religious extremism in the Middle East as an enormous obstacle to peace, but unfortunately misses the opportunity to point to the role of the U.S.'s own religious fundamentalism as comprising a key force in our continued support for Israel.
Posted by: Nathaniel Frentz | Jun 28, 2007 11:22:09 PM
the sickness of it--that Jeffery Sachs, or any other two bit American or Israeli or Briton's opinion should count far more then any one Palestinian's or that of 2.5 million Palestinians.
Posted by: crateofmangos | Jun 28, 2007 11:54:13 PM
Re saifedean
Mr. saifedean apparently refuses to address himself to the real issue. The issue is not settlements, Jerusalem, or even water rights. The issue is the refusal of the Palestinian leadership to stop insisting that the Government of Israel go out of business. As long as this Palestinian demand persists, there is no hope of a peaceful settlement.
Posted by: SLC | Jun 29, 2007 8:31:14 AM
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