Monday, March 15, 2010
Amazing. Some clarity on the issue of Arab rejectionism.
Read it all.
And note: this rejectionism isn't a "past tense," but continues to this day and has made real progress - settlements or no settlements - just impossible when it comes down to it.
Let's assume a best case scenario, in which the PA and Israel agree to a mutually satisfactory deal.
What about the factions that just plain refuse to accept Israel's existence period?
Note I don't think this means we shouldn't try but it's hard not to be pessimistic especially in view of the several good offers and even the spectacle of Gaza, where Jews where literally dragged out of their homes, even out of their graves - this could have been a real beginning for Palestinian statehood and self-determination and instead resulted in a disaster, and the bloody takeover of the Strip by Hamas, the attacks of Israel and ultimately Cast Lead which killed and harmed so many Palestinians and also damaged Israel, perhaps irretrievably, in the world's eyes.
Meanwhile I think this is an important observation by Yglesias who is quoted in the Goldberg piece:
...Well...I don't want to re-litigate Camp David (I'm sure you know the back-and-forth on this as well as I do) but suffice it to say that they had a much better offer on the table from the UN 60 years ago and rejecting it clearly wasn't part of some bargaining strategy...
Here's a position I think we'll agree on: One of the key psychological/political impediments to a deal is the unwillingness of Arabs today to embrace any kind of regret about the position they took on the partition plan. The "naqba" narrative, as conventionally presented, is a form of regret that the Arabs lost the war. You're never going to get Arabs to celebrate Israeli independence day, but I think it's plausible and necessary to have the disaster understood as one that was in large part of their own making...
Hallelujah.
