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Mideast Peace Process Is a Mirage

(Washington Post) George F. Will - Talk about the crisis between Israel and "the Arab world" is anachronistic. Israel has treaties with two Arab nations, Egypt and Jordan, and Israel's most lethal enemy is Iran, which is not an Arab state. Israel has changed what it can, its own near neighborhood. Faced with unrelenting Palestinian irredentism, withdrawal from the West Bank would bring Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport within range of short-range rockets fired by persons overlooking the runways. So, the feasibility of such a withdrawal depends on how much has changed since 1974, when Yasser Arafat received a standing ovation at the United Nations when he said Israel had no right to exist. Thirty-six years later, Israelis can watch West Bank Palestinian television incessantly inculcating anti-Semitism and denial of Israel's right to exist. Cigarette lighters sold on the West Bank show, when lit, the World Trade Center burning. The biggest threat to peace might be the peace process - or, more precisely, the illusion that there is one. The mirage becomes the reason for maintaining its imaginary "momentum" by extorting concessions from Israel. Palestinian officials are demanding that the 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction in the West Bank be extended as the price of their willingness to continue direct talks with Israel - which begin Sept. 2 - beyond Sept. 27. If this demand succeeds, the "peace process" will be sustained by rewarding the Palestinian tactic of making the mere fact of negotiations contingent on Israeli concessions concerning matters that should be settled by negotiations.
2010-08-26 08:04:11
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