In response to the prior post regarding the new Peace Process (which included Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”), David Gerstman (Soccer Dad) emailed me a Charles Krauthammer column on George Santayana’s definition of fanaticism –“redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
The Krauthammer article is dated . . . well, read a brief excerpt and see if you can guess the year:
It takes that kind of fanaticism to believe that the correct response . . . during the current "peace process" is to redouble the effort . . . And yet accelerating the peace process is exactly what a chorus of Western voices is advocating. . . .
[Hamas] is one of two leading political movements in Palestinian society. Is it a majority? Perhaps, but even if not, so what? . . . [T]hey certainly represent a moral majority, enjoying the silent approbation of large sections of Palestinian society. . . . There is a substantial, determined part of the Palestinian people, a part with much popular support and no significant moral opposition, that utterly rejects any peace, any compromise, anything that leaves standing a Jewish state.
To ignore such a message is folly. It is even greater folly to counter that message by increasing Israel’s vulnerability with a grotesquely named "peace process" . . . . [Gaza is] now a terrorist preserve that Israel does not control, cannot even enter. It is Beirut brought home. To answer this security catastrophe by creating more Gazas in the West Bank, even closer now to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Haifa, is the very definition of fanaticism.
The article was written in 1995. Five years later, the Palestinian Authority was twice offered a state, on substantially all of the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in Jerusalem — once at Camp David in July 2000 and again with the Clinton Parameters in December 2000 — and twice the PA rejected it, in favor of a new war.
In 2003, having lost that war, the Palestinian Authority was offered still another opportunity for a state, and formally agreed to a plan under which final status issues would be addressed if — but only if — the PA first conducted sustained and visible efforts to dismantle the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. In 2004, the U.S. formally promised Israel it would not support any other plan. In 2005, Israel dismantled all 21 settlements in Gaza (plus four others in the West Bank as an indication that further withdrawals would occur) and turned Gaza over to the Palestinians to enable them to demonstrate their ability to live “side by side in peace and security.” In 2006, the Palestinians elected Hamas to run their government, who then used Gaza to send rockets into Israel, build tunnels underneath it, kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers, and import massive quantities of new weapons in preparation for another war.
So now, in 2007, with not a single terrorist organization dismantled, with the premier one elected to run the Palestinian government, with Gaza completely in their hands, with the areas on Israel’s Southern and Northern borders armed to the teeth, and with the West Bank secure only because of the presence of the IDF, the U.S. has decided to redouble efforts to pressure Israel to commence final status negotiations on the basis of a Saudi Plan calling for a complete withdrawal and a right of return.
You need to consult Einstein and Santayana (and remember Santayana’s other famous quotation) to explain the psychology of such a “peace process.”
We need a presidential candidate who will return to the principles that George W. Bush enunciated in his landmark June 24, 2002 speech, and who has the courage to say this:
The Palestinian people need decent governance first, as a prerequisite for statehood. Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians — negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again. It is not in the interest of the
United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism. Palestinian statehood will have to be earned through sustained good governance, a clear commitment to fighting terrorism, and a willingness to live in peace with Israel.