Too Narrow a Focus?

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), May 1, 2007 at 15:06

On the one hand, I agree with everything Dan Pipes says in this piece. But on the other hand , a whole area of vital analysis is, for the umpteenth time, not looked at.

For the continuing vital missing link in the whole drama of Israel vs the Palestinians - actually Israel and the entire West vs at least the Middle Eastern Moslem world - is the West's (including Israel's) ongoing refusal or inability to ask the following question: What if the Palestinians, and by extension, the Moslem Middle East, don't want a state for the Palestinians if the price of that State is a genuine and peaceful acceptance of the existence and prosperity of Israel in "their' area of the world?

Can anybody tell me why it is that neither Israel's leadership and strategic thinkers, nor Europe's, nor the American foreign policy Establishment (whether of the Democratic or Republican members, including the supposedly over hawkish Necocons), nor legions of (Group?)Think Tanks that proliferate like weeds, can ask themselves this basic and threshold question, despite the fact that this refusal-to-accept seems to offer by far the most consistent interpretation of Israeli-Arab history over the past 59 (or 90) years?

It remains most odd and weird to my mind that it was so much easier for Bush and his Neocons to invade Iraq for the supposed (albeit suspiciously late-blooming) purpose of democratizing the Middle East, when the the wiser and non-bloody policy would have been to simply say to all these dysfunctional states, "You will never know progress or peace within and among yourselves unless you follow, at least to some degree, the model of democracy and free markets, and you have a brilliant success at that right beside you, which is Israel."

Of course, there remains a profound and unshakeable taboo against saying anything like this, and I believe that taboo is a chief, perhaps the chief, reason why we are in such a mess in Iraq, which has measurably increased the danger to World peace and order, including of course the danger to Israel.

Put another way, the refusal to drop the failed and dangerous policy of "even-handedness" toward the Israelis and Palestinians is itself, in my view, a part of the Existential threat to the existence of Israel. It is time to stop repeating the fatuous mantra that "everyone knows" what a final peace will look like, when this vapid fatuity obviously does not include either the Palestinians or any State which refuses to recognize Israel.

But of course, the belligerent and abstaining Moslem States know full well that withholding recognition of Israel is at once a green light and a powerful incentive to Islam's terrorists everywhere to keep hunting for ways to attack Israel and kill Jews. Only the unbelievably timid establishment groups of the West seem oblivious to this.

So I hope that instead of merely pointing out how much anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment there is, Dan Pipes will take up this question of what to do if the Palestinians don't want a State which accepts Israel, and if Saudi Arabia refuses to extend recognition, as proof that it doesn't support the terrorist goal of exterminating Israel (only if it does this should the governments of the West take its "peace" proposal seriously.

Ron Thompson.

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