The other day on "Meet the Press," Senator Clinton told Tim Russert that there is no military solution in Iraq, that the war requires a political solution, presumably a just division of power and resources (as Ambassador Crocker said to Congress lately). So much for the war on terror.
Consider the history of violence in Israel/Palestine. Arabs have had a violent response to Jewish immigration and territorial expansion for 75 years, since ’29. They rose up against partition in ’47, they rose against the Jewish state in ’48, to "strangle Israel at its birth," as this writer states. As Tony Judt has noted, Israel started the ’67 war, countering an Arab rise. But the Arabs re-rose in ’73, in part to reclaim territory lost in ’67. By then, the settlements of what Begin now called "Judea and Samaria" had begun. The Palestinians rose in the first intifadah and the second. They became suicide bombers– much like the Iraqis who Hillary says require a political response.
And in that whole process, the Arab hold on Palestine went from more than half, to about half, to 22 percent. And now less than 22 percent, as the choice land of the West Bank and Jordan valley is colonized and walled off. There is no military solution.
