As the Obama administration tries to broker a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a dark truth lurking: force has produced clearer results in this dispute than talk.Obviously, they have to compare Israel's self defense to the Palestinian Terror -- and claim that Palestinian Terror works as well (which is true, since Peres and Rabin caved into Palestinian terror which started the Oslo accords, proving that crime pays...kidnapping Gilad Shalit will result in the release of a thousand terrorists...Olso was all about releasing terrorists...)...Meanwhile for many Israelis, the past decade looks like a model of the primacy of military action over diplomacy.
Through relentless commando operations and numerous checkpoints, the Israeli Army ended suicide bombings and other terrorist acts from the West Bank; since its 2006 war with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, widely dismissed as a failure at the time, the group has not fired one rocket at Israel; and Israel’s operation against Gaza last December has greatly curtailed years of Hamas rocket fire, returning a semblance of normality to the Israeli south.
Two years ago, Israeli fighter planes destroyed what Israel and the United States say was a budding Syrian nuclear reactor; and last year in Syria, Israeli agents assassinated Imad Mugniyah, the top military operative for Hezbollah and a crucial link to its Iranian sponsors, a severe blow to both Hezbollah and Iran.
Diplomatic efforts, whether the Oslo peace talks of the 1990s or the Turkish-mediated negotiations with Syria last year have, by contrast, produced little. Every Israeli military operation of recent years — including the December invasion of Gaza that was condemned Friday by the United Nations Human Rights Council by a vote of 25 to 6 and referred to the Security Council following a report by a committee led by Richard Goldstone — has come under international censure.
Today all are viewed here as having been judged prematurely and unfairly but having delivered the goods — keeping Israel safe through deterrence. (NYTimes)
Read the article. Draw your own conclusions.
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Wow. Bilaam speaks. Days are coming...
ReplyDeletewhy no link? couldn't find it at the times site.
ReplyDeleteThe article is here.
ReplyDeleteThe warriors and soldiers are the ones who truly keep the peace. What politicians and diplomats do is try to erase all their gains. No piece of paper has produced real quiet at any time in history. If Israel enjoys peace and quiet today, all that is due to the IDF.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article for the NYT. Who is this Ethan Bronner? Can't imagine writing like this from the BBC.
ReplyDeleteAs for the UN report, who cares what they say? The UN is just a talking shop that generates even more talk from politicians and media. I'd be surprised if there were ever any meaningful sanctions against Israel. Isreal should just do whatever it needs to do.
Rob, Ethan Bronner is the Times's Jerusalem Bureau chief. (Previously he had been foreign editor of the Times and the Israel correspondent for the Boston Globe.) He tends to be one of the better reporters in Israel.
ReplyDeleteStill, Jameel, what's troubling about the article is that he never gets to the bottom of why force works better than diplomacy. And that's because the conditions were never right for diplomacy. I can't imagine him admitting that.