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The Boring Palestinians

(Wall Street Journal) Bret Stephens - For all its presumed importance, the Palestinian saga has gotten awfully boring, hasn't it? The grievances that remain unchanged, a cast of characters that never alters. We get it. We just don't give a damn anymore. The region is moving tumultuously forward. Israel is dynamic, threatened, innovative, evolving. Egypt careens between revolution and restoration. Lebanon is on the brink, Iran is on the march, Syria is in its agony. Only the Palestinians remain trapped in ideological amber. Palestinians will say it's on account of their supposedly unique experience of injustice and oppression. Professional peace processors think it's because of the supposed centrality of the Palestinian drama to all other Middle Eastern conflicts. Take the most jaundiced view of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians over the past dozen years: Does it hold a candle to what Bashar Assad does in any given week to his own people in Homs and Aleppo? Take the most exaggerated view of the dearness of Palestine to Egyptians on the streets of Cairo or Turks in the squares of Istanbul: How does their sympathy for Gaza compare with their outrage toward their own governments? Is it any wonder that, given the choice between a long-term moral threat to their character as a state and a near-term physical threat to their existence as a nation, ordinary Israelis should be more concerned with the latter?
2013-07-17 00:00:00
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