Yesterday the Jerusalem Post reported that in Israel, former National security adviser General Jim Jones said that Israel/Palestine is the heart of the problem in the Middle East. That’s the linkage idea.
“I’m of the belief that had God appeared in front of President Obama in 2009 and said if he could do one thing on the face of the planet, and one thing only, to make the world a better place and give people more hope and opportunity for the future, I would venture that it would have something to do with finding the two-state solution to the Middle East.” Speaking to reporters after addressing the conference, Jones said Israel’s dispute with the Palestinians was the “knot that is at the center of mass.”
Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative blogger at the Washington Post, writes:
Nevertheless, to American ears at the conference the recitation of the mantra that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the region’s central problem seemed decidedly off-key when Egypt is suffering an eruption, Tunisia has thrown off the shackles of its despot and Iran is on the offense in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere. It also puts Gen. David Petraeus’s comments along the same lines in context. One suspects that the upper echelons of the military are steeped in the brew of “Israel is the key to the region’s problems” conventional wisdom. In that regard, one is tempted to advise a great many generals and admirals to hush up and fight.
