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Stop Blaming Bibi

(Foreign Policy) Aaron David Miller - The Palestinian national movement today is in profound crisis. There are two prime ministers, security services, constitutions, foreign patrons, geographic polities, and visions. If anything, these divisions are hardening. Without Palestinian unity that produces one authority and one negotiating position, there won't be a serious dialogue, let alone a Palestinian state. Palestinians have to face the inconvenient truth that a state's viability lies in its capacity to maintain a monopoly over violence in its own society. Without it, no state can maintain the respect of its neighbors or its own citizens. Are we going to blame Fatah's dysfunction and Hamas' viability on Bibi? On Jerusalem, refugees, security, and even the borders of a prospective Palestinian state, there are wide differences between Israel and the Palestinians. The silly notion that everyone knows generally what the solution will be - and that therefore getting there should be easy - only trivializes how hard it's going to be to reach a conflict-ending accord. The writer is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
2012-09-28 00:00:00
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