Hillary Clinton agrees with me. She has accepted the core lesson of the Iraq experience–and says that the U.S. must deal with one-time terrorist elements in working with a unity government the Palestinians form. The old No partner for peace foot-dragging by the Israel lobby is out the window. Clinton has said:
we may do business with people who got swept up
in some kind of move that doesn’t necessarily define their attitude
toward the United States, or the use of violence
Matt Duss says this is the new conventional wisdom.
This reminds me that, for all of their trumpeting about the success
of the Iraq surge, conservatives have never been forced to admit how
the strategy of reaching out to former insurgent elements in Iraq
represented a complete refutation
of the “war on terror” ideology that the Bush administration embraced
after 9/11. Clearly, there are terrorist networks that seek to do
Americans and our allies harm, but the idea that they represent
anything like a united “Islamofascist” front against the West or an
“axis of evil” necessitating “with us or against us” ultimata has
rightly been cast into the ash heap of history.
Robert Naiman echoes the point at Huffpo, noting that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a stalwart of the lobby, has backed Clinton on this line (per the JTA). Naiman suggests that Obama feels he has political cover for putting pressure on Israel re the settlements, too. But is it all too late for the alleged two-state solution?
It would be even more newsworthy were Clinton to have made the same demands of Israel: renounce violence, recognize Palestine and abide by past agreements. Imagine the day Clinton publicly encourages Israel to dismantle settlements. Can you?
With the Naiman piece — has anyone seen these "…hints in the press that the Obama Administration has been considering conditioning U.S. aid to Israel on a real freeze of Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank…" If you have, can I have a link — Thanks?
Spanners thrown in the works from the Israeli side:
aka they'll be no peace on my watch!
Israel must free Marwan Barghouti to achieve peace. Abbas is an empty suit.
RE: "But is it all too late for the alleged two-state solution?" ANSWER: Probably; but let's play make-believe!
Abbas won't bring peace because he's working for Israel and the US government, and not for the Palestinian people. He's not a moderate. He's a puppet. Anything he says to the contrary (as in the above quotes) is just cover. The reason "it's not working" with the Palestinians, while peace was achieved with Egypt and Jordan, is because Israel is still in the process of eliminating the Palestinians as a people. The people of Egypt and Jordan never had to face this kind of reality. And the piece quoted above conveniently neglects to mention the fact that one important facet of Egypt's peace with Israel was that Israel ended its occupation of the Sinai and removed all of its settlements from there. Israel is not only not ending the occupation of Palestinian land, it is still in the process of taking more and more of it every day. The Palestinians will live in peace with Israel when Israel stops trying to eliminate them as a people, and abides by international law governing the right of refugees to return to their homes.
With any luck, Abbas will face the same fate as Diem.
I wish Abbas would get the Swine flu. Then maybe we can get one of those crazed Saudi Islamic scholars to issue a fatwa. Swine is haram. That makes swine flu haram. That makes anyone who has swine flu haram. Therefore, we must jail all those with the swine flu. Then we can lock away Abbas forever. (That is my fever dream. It is much better than Natenyahoo's). Don't forget people, Mandela was a terrorist and was just removed from a terrorist list by Condi.
Stop calling people who kill Israelis "terrorists." They are sanitation workers.