Tonight on the PBS NewsHour (yes I lead a boring life), Zbigniew Brzezinski made a brilliant analogy. He said that when the Carter Administration came to power, Brzezinski, national security adviser, dealt with the new Likud government and its Prime Minister Menachem Begin (who in the days of the British Mandate had led terror activities). Begin claimed that there was no such thing as a Palestinian and did not abide the possibility of a Palestinian state ever sharing Palestine with Israel. Notwithstanding the extremist background and attitudes, we talked to Likud.
Israel has shunned the new, democratically-elected government of Hamas (which enforced a moratorium on terrorist activity for over a year) because Hamas does not recognize Israel’s existence. Brzezinski said that the U.S. is in exactly the same position as it was with Likud. We’re a superpower with a keen interest in seeing an equitable solution in Palestine. We should talk to whoever we want to talk to.
(Thus the tail wags the dog. Or is Condi about to change things?)
