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The Energy Wall

[New York Times, 1Dec06] Thomas L. Friedman - I believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the big "clash of civilizations" now under way between the Muslim world and the West what the Spanish Civil War was to World War II. It's Off Broadway to Broadway. The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, was the theater where Great European powers tested out many weapons and tactics that were later deployed on a larger scale in World War II. Similarly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the small theater where many weapons and tactics get tested out first and then go global. So if you study the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Off Broadway, you can learn a lot about how the larger war now playing out on Broadway, in Iraq and Afghanistan, might proceed. For instance, airplane hijacking was perfected in the Israeli-Palestinian context, as a weapon of terrorism, and then was globalized. Suicide bombing was perfected there, and then was globalized. The Oslo peace process, which David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, calls an "attempt by Israel to empower a Palestinian partner with whom to negotiate," was first tried there and then, in a different way, moved to the big stage with the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. These were a U.S. effort to create Arab and Afghan partners to push a progressive, democratic agenda in the Muslim world. Unfortunately, Oslo failed Off Broadway. So what do we do next? Again, start by looking at what happened in the Israeli-Palestinian theater. Israel decided to just build a wall. As a result of the Palestinian intifada of 2000-2004. Israel concluded that partnership at that time was impossible with the Palestinians, whose leaders were too divided and dysfunctional to prevent suicide bombing. So Israel erected a wall, unilaterally pulled out of Gaza, and basically said to the Palestinians, "We'll continue to engage you, but only from a position of strength, only after we're insulated from the daily threat of suicide bombings or the burden of occupying Gaza." What would be the equivalent for the West and the Muslim world? How do we insulate ourselves from the madness of the Middle East - if Iraq and Afghanistan can't be made to work - without giving up on reform there, which is still badly needed? Build a virtual wall. End our oil addiction. Build a wall of energy independence that will enable us to continue to engage honestly with the most progressive Arabs and Muslims on a reform agenda, but without being hostage to the most malevolent.
2006-12-01 01:00:00
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