re: #449 Joo-LiZ

Bush encouraged the pull-out from Gaza, and Sharon agreed with various understandings. Sharon managed to implement the pull out. That was huge, was NO easy feat, and quite literally tore up the country. That was for 10,000 settlers.

Now we see the results, and that changes a lot of things. Before theories of the aftermath were purely theoretical… what would Palestinians do with their own plot of land with no Israeli involvement? Now the aftermath of Israeli withdrawal has a precedent, and it is a bad one.

We can’t just ignore the lessons from the Lebanon pull out in 2000 and Gaza pull out in 2005.

I am really of the belief that any “peace-process”-ing would be a total farce. The only party that can actually take action that would be apparent on the world stage at this point is Israel, and as far as I am concerned they have taken more than enough risks for 0 return.

There needs to be a period without grand-standing expectations of a magical “deal” during which the Palestinians consolidate their society, develop their security cooperation with Israel, END THE INCITEMENT, and slowly win over Israeli trust.

That isn’t happening.

Obama’s position is basically to make it LOOK like there is movement on that front… so he pressures the one party that CAN act to make as many concessions as possible. He can’t admit that the situation some time without significant action, and he can’t put major pressure on the Palestinians because they are too weak as is. All that ends up happening is Obama continues to push peace further away.

I largely agree with much of this, and I’m not particularly impressed with either the Obama administration or the Bush administration in regards to all of this.

I just object to the pretense that Obama’s approach represents some break with ongoing U.S. policy (not that ongoing US policy has gotten us much of anywhere), or that Obama shows some special hostility toward Israel. That’s fantasy, and it was getting revved up and passed around before Obama had a chance to do anything at all as President.