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Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Fool on the Page

Tom Friedman never fails to surprise me.  The columnist for the New York Times dispenses advice each week to a world that just does not seem to listen.  If Friedman ever wonders why no one pays attention, he ought to consider today's effort and learn from it.  In today's Times, Friedman's topic sentence is to ponder whether or not Israel has forgotten that it is in the Middle East.  Now even Friedman does not mean this literally; instead, he is wondering if the Israelis no longer focus on the precariousness of their position as an island of a few million Jews in the middle of hundreds of millions of arabs who want them gone.

So what we have here is proof positive that Friedman lives in a bubble, a fantasyland where reality is ignored.  In Israel, in just the last few days they have had to face rockets launched into the country from Gaza, and attack from Syrian forces on soldiers near the border who had to respond with fire back into Syria, a chemical attack launched within Syria by one crazy faction on another one, and the threat from the Iranians to level Tel Aviv and Haifa.  And all this is just since Wednesday.  But Friedman wonders if the Israelis are ignoring these events?  The reality is that the Israelis are coping with their problems, but they are not doing it in the way that Friedman would like.  As a typical liberal, Friedman wants results dictated by ideology, no matter what they are.  He is still stuck on the idea that Israel must take chances for peace, and the chances that he wants taken are further concessions and withdrawals by Israel.

For what it is worth, we ought to look back at the last thirty years to see the concessions and chances during that time.

First, there was the Israeli peace with Egypt.  Israel withdrew from the Sinai.  This area is four times larger than the current territory of Israel.  Israel also removed all settlers who were living in the Sinai at the time of the withdrawal.  All that Israel got in exchange was a peace treaty with Egypt.

Second, Israel reached a peace treaty with Jordan.  This put the focus on resolving matters with the Palestinians.

Third, in the early 1990s, Israel finalized the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.  In this agreement, Israel negotiated with the PLO; that was quite a chance.  Israel also withdrew from a number of areas on the West Bank and let the Palestinians form the Palestinian Authority to govern these areas.  Aside from moving towards peace, Israel got nothing in return.  Israel kept moving forward taking chances for peace.  At Camp David at the end of the Clinton years, Israel offered the Palestinians essentially everything that they wanted in exchange for peace.  Yassir Arafat rejected the deal and started a terror campaign which was much more difficult to suppress because of all the controls that the Israelis had given up.  In order to stop random shootings into Jewish areas and terror attacks, the Israelis built a wall to control the border between Israel and the West Bank.  But at the same time, Israel took another chance for peace:  it turned the Gaza strip over to the Palestinians.  Israel got nothing in exchange for Gaza.  Indeed, all that Israel has received for this turnover is an ongoing barrage of missiles fired into Israel from Gaza.  So Israel took a chance for peace of the sort Friedman wants and got death and destruction in return.

Right now, Israel is at a point where it cannot take further "chances" even if Friedman's ideology tells him that it must be done.  Friedman might as well sing to "give peace a chance".  It won't change reality.  It is not possible to make peace with someone who does not want to do so.  Israel does not have anyone with whom to deal.  For the last five years, we have watched Abbas find reason after reason not to proceed with peace talks.  For a while the supposed problem was Israeli settlements.  But the Israelis took a chance and froze settlement construction for nine months.  In response, Abbas did nothing for eight months and then held a "negotiation" session which he broke off because the nine month freeze expired.

It would be nice to send Tom Friedman to live in Jerusalem for six months.  He could use the time to try to put his ideas for peace into action.  He may be too far gone for reality to make its way into his brain, but I think that he ought to be willing to take a chance for reality.  After all, Friedman should not forget that he lives in New York City and not the Middle East.



 

 

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