Western media observers mostly do not understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all. It’s interesting to speculate if our governments do.
Either they are are really as clueless as they look, or something entirely different is going on.
Annapolis: One Cheer, One Yawn, One Cynical Shrug
By Barry Rubin
Before the Annapolis meeting, some said the operation would save the patient; others that it would kill the patient. In fact, the patient is exactly the same but the doctors had a hell of a big party and congratulated themselves on doing a terrific job.
We’ll end the conflict by December 2008, says President Bush. We want to make peace and get along, say Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) The Western media cheers it as a big success since everyone showed up and said the right words; nobody walked out or hurled insults. It’s enough to make you believe that peace is at hand.
But there’s a huge gap between Western and Middle Eastern reactions to the meeting. While the former celebrates, the latter knows better than to expect anything.
It isn’t surprising that Western would-be mediators cannot end a conflict when they don’t understand why it exists. Neither the Arab-Israeli nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on a misunderstanding, a gap that can be closed by well-meaning but ignorant conflict managers, or Israeli intransigence.
The reason the issue persists is twofold. First, the Palestinians and a very large portion of their fellow Arabs still want and expect total victory. They don’t seek compromise because they don’t really want a two-state solution, at least not as more than a temporary stage leading to Israel’s disappearance from the map. Thus, there is endless talk about Israeli concessions and commitments but virtually nothing about what is required by the other side. Why? Because they won’t give anything and pointing that out too explicitly shows there is no chance of real progress.
Second, Arab politics needs the conflict’s continuation. Incumbent regimes require it to provide a scapegoat so they can mobilize support for themselves and as an excuse letting them explain away their own multiple failures. The Islamist oppositions need it as a slogan in their pursuit of power. Fatah is in the first category; Hamas in the second.
Consequently, any analysis that piously blames each side equally is incapable of comprehending Middle East politics. Yet peace brokers believe their effectiveness requires a dishonesty that ensures their own failure. They pretend intransigence, terrorism, and incitement comes from both parties.
The future is easily predictable: endless talks; no agreement. The only progress will be from the comforting illusions of vague speeches like those made at Annapolis.
This will have little effect on the ground. Attempts to attack Israel will be made daily, including by Fatah members who may get U.S. training but reject an end to the conflict or even resettling Palestine refugees in a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state. The PA will arrest almost nobody and hold no one in jail very long. Anti-Israel incitement will continue.
Indeed, the day after the conference ended, PA television ran multiple times a film showing Israel being transformed into an Arab Palestine. What is amazing is not that the PA makes inadequate attempts to preach peace and compromise but that it makes no effort at all in that direction. Meanwhile, what Abbas is really hoping for and expecting is not so much any material Israeli concessions but billions of dollars in foreign aid, in exchange for which he won’t be asked to do much more than merely to survive.
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