I think it’s about seeing the whole picture which unfortunately a lot of people are not prepared to do.

What is even more surprising to me is that you are seeing the whole picture even though you are yourself of the Jewish faith. In those circumstances I cannot understand why so many American non-Jews wade into this subject with fists flying so to speak and will not countenance any view that does not see ALL Palestinians as terrorists.

I say again, it was refreshing to read your posting.

And I like the Hatfield-McCoy analogy. It works too well.

Briefly (I have to work on my new book), Arafat walked out of the talks with the complaint that the Israelis were offering only 85% percent of what he wanted. The Israelis put the percentage higher, but let’s accept Arafat’s figure. I have a question for you, when you have been in a negotiation that offered you 85% of what you wanted did you continue to negotiate… or did you walk out and start a violent Intifada? My assumption if you did hte latter was that you didn’t really want peace, that want you wanted was the illusion of wanting peace while you sought the total destruction of ISrael. In the old days I didn’t think that but now, alas, I am reconsidering.

I linked to the article because, first of all, the article’s author (an American negotiator on Clinton’s team) was there; and second of all, I find his account - which suggests that all sides of the dispute are human, and none are fully perfect or fully evil - is by far the most plausible account I’ve read. I don’t find “my side was perfect, their side was evil” accounts as plausible, somehow.

In my view, Israel did not offer 85%; Arafat didn’t end negotiations (they continued after Camp David); and the infitada didn’t start out in the incredibly simplictic and one-dimensional way you describe. You’ve described the extreme pro-Israel perspective on events, but I don’t think that one perspective describes the entire truth of the matter. Therefore, your final question, based as it is on a number of beliefs I don’t think are true, doesn’t make much sense for me to answer.

but then, I’m not saying anything you don’t already know

“If you assume that the Israeli point of view is 100% legitimate, and all other views are 100% lies…” You know, even Israeli writers don’t subscribe to that point of view. Why do so many American Jews?

I’ll try to summarize their central points as best I can remember.

The first is “Palestinians Divided” by Khalil Shikaki, from January/February 2002. This article deals with how the intifada got started. Shikaki separates Palestinian politics into three competing groups: the ‘Old Nationalists’, the ‘Young Nationalists’ and the Islamists. The Old Nationalists are the members and leaders of the PLA-in-exile in the 1980s (like Abbas), who ‘gambled on’ the Oslo peace process in 1993. The Young Nationalists were the ’street’ leaders in the first intifada. The Islamists include Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Shikaki claims that the intifada was organized by the Young Militants with the goal of simultaneously replacing the Old Nationalists as the leders of the Palestinians and forcing Israel to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat tried to balance himself between Old Nationalists (who had gambled on the peace process and tried to salvage it) and the Young Nationalists in order to keep his power and status/position/influence.

Shikaki also has a lot of interesting data from Palestinian opinion polls about views of the peace process and the use of violence against the various ‘categories’ of Israelis (soldiers, settlers, civilians). He also summarizes what he sees as three possible paths Israel can take to deal with the intifada:

1) Restart negotiations, which Shikaki claims would benefit the Old Nationalists who gambled their political capital on negotiations in the 1990s.

2) Withdraw, which Shikaki claims would benefit the Young Nationalists, who would claim the withdrawal as the successful conclusion of their intifada.

3) Stick to the present state of affairs (raids, roadblocks, possible negotiations in the future), which Shikaki claims would benefit the Islamists as the cycle of violence and retaliations continues and further radicalizes those involved.

The second article is “The Last Negotiation” by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, from May/June 2002. This article looks at the end of Israel/Palestinian talks at Camp David and Taba. It argues that any future negotiations should just start off where the last negotiations ended and not try to set up any interim conflict-reducing and trust-building agreements or periods.

What I found most fascinating in this article was its detailed look at the specifics of the last negotiations. Since I don’t have it with me, I won’t trust my memory and try to put down the details given in the article (which included percentage of the Occupied Territories that would be included in Palestine, the amount of Israeli land that would be transferred to Palestine to compensate for portions of the West Bank that would be annexed by Israel, etc.)

I thought these were both balanced and enlightening articles that really impressed me and stuck in my mind. And, since a vigorous debate is still going about the negotiations and the intifada, they seem relevant to the current discussion. Sorry for going on so long.

I have been wondering lately if there is a big mental gulf between those of us who hold some countries and peoples to a higher standard than we do others and those who hold everyone to the same standard; and whether to hold someone to a higher standard shows your respect for her or is an act of injustice.

I thought of this originally in relation to the Gitmo prisoners. Anytime they are mentioned, some people on the right immediately say that the prisoners America is holding indefinitely are much better off than Iraqi prisoners under Saddam were.
Of course they are. But since when does the U.S. set its metric of humanity by a brutal military dictator? I respect America so I expect better.

The same is true of Israel. It is a democracy expressly guided by religion, has American support and appears to be an economically successful and internally just society. I think of Israel as operating from a position clearly higher and more secure than the Palestinians, so I expect reactions to violence to be more rational and long-sighted.

But I think people who have what has been termed “Likudnik” views may see Israel and Palestine very differently, and consider Israel to be much more vulnerable and less able to be a thoughtful or generous party than I do.

In relation to the wall, I think Israel should recognize how worried Palestinians are that their land will be swallowed up forever, and build the wall within the bounds of land that definitely will not be ceded in any future peace agreement.
I see Israel as better able to do this than the Palestinians are able to view the wall as no threat to them.

I think not.

And Elayne is right—the inclusion of settlements by the wall would provide tacit official approval to illegally occupied territory.

your blog gives the impression that the innocent, saintly Israelis are constantly being attacked for no reason

this is what happens most of the time

by people who don’t have the slightest cause for complaint

they do, but they are taking their “complaints” to the wrong address, which is exactly what constitutes their crimes

, and never vice-versa

what do you mean? that Allison never writes about innoncent, saintly Palestinians attacked by Israelis who do not have the slightest cause for complaint?

The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants — blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her.

“I asked him not to shoot Jessica,” Mr. Khazal said, “and he was afraid of God and didn’t kill her.” Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.)

Kampfner has never fully explained the many problems with his report, and this only makes it worse.

I think the above highlights the typical naivette of “bleeding heart” liberals. Some humans are fully evil, or at least more that others, as incomprehensible as it may be to the rest of us. Ampersand’s mistaken assertion is what drives a “blame the victim” mentality. The victim must have done something, so the thinking goes, because it’s implausible to think the perpetrator was completely wrong. Unfortunately, history and even everyday scanning of your local paper show otherwise.

To be a bit more specific, given Israeli actions over the years, I find the depiction of Israel as being the utterly innocent victim, which didn’t do anything at all blameworthy, to be a tad implausible.

I think the idea of trying to establish some overall innocent-hood is pretty silly. It’s like purity or virginity or something, and then we can all be sure we’re on the right side and feel really good about ourselves and better than other people.

Knocking on some straw man of supposed innocence really misses the point, which is that this is not a simple situation, that conflicting needs and desires are not about innocence/purity, and attaching abstract adjectives like innocent or guilt to practically any group ultimately just serves lets you forget about the humanity and individuality of the people involved. It’s these sweeping concepts of guilt vs. innocence that lets Hamas describe every single Israeli, from the 60 yr old new immigrant to the 19 yr old soldier to the two year old infant as guilty Zionists and appropriate targets for murder.

But pointing to different histories, differing versions of events, and presenting them, and even supporting them, is exactly what EVERYBODY is doing. You’ve already decided what you’re supporting, and of course you think it’s right and everybody else’s is wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen yours. But you have to understand that the facts and versions and histories you’ve chosen are not posted on some heavenly wall, with God’s affadavit written beneath.

And it would help if you didn’t respond to other people’s versions, facts, and histories, by reading them in pieces and picking out pieces to set up as straw men and claim to be writing fair unbiased posts.

Zionists — virtually all, as far as I can see –talk about the wall as something which saves lives; that is, it assists them in preventing Palestinians from fighting against their oppression, which along with political assassination and mass terror, may eventually help the Israelis to crush all Palestinian resistance so that the present system of racial and political oppression lasts for a thousand years.

This is hideous, even in principle. There is simply no point in debating with people who adopt this position, however nice they may be as people in other ways. They do not see Palestinians as human beings; there is the problem. They see Palestinians as obstacles to the permanent security of the Jewish state.

The issue of Palestinian terrorism, lack of democracy, or anything else, is actually irrelevant to the question of the legitimacy (both moral and political)of Israeli behaviour, which is why Zionists hide behind it. And why Zionists deal with criticism of any kind with personal abuse and utterly spurious pretensions about their own moral purity.

There are, no doubt, Zionists who do not fit the above categorization. That does not invalidate the criticisms. There were also, no doubt, sincere supporters of apartheid in South Africa, although I never met one.

To give you an idea of where I’m coming from, I consider the I-P conflict roughly equivalent to the Algerian war of independence. One thing that has come up time and again in my discussions of Algeria is that France, unlike Israel, had a safe avenue of retreat - it had the Mediterranean as a natural border between it and Algeria. Most Israelis at this point want to disengage from the Palestinians, but the lack of a defensible natural border combined with Palestinian terrorism presents a serious self-defense problem. There are thus two ways to bring about an end to the occupation: stop all Palestinian terrorism (which isn’t possible by military means) or build a border. That’s why the wall is so damned important - it will be for Israel what the Mediterranean was for France, and enable the IDF to take a defensive posture on the Israeli side of the wall.

I’m at a loss to understand exactly how Palestinian terrorism is “irrelevant” to all this, either politically or morally. Politically, terrorism has dictated Israeli military strategy, made disengagement much more difficult and radicalized the Israeli electorate in much the same way that the occupation has radicalized the Palestinians. Morally, as Amp says, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and the Palestinian terrorists are among the blameworthy.

Jonathan, I don’t think “dictated” (”terrorism has dictated Israeli military strategy”) is the correct word; that implies that Israel has had no choice at all, which I don’t beleive is true. Israel had no choice but to acknowlege and respond to terrorism, but it did have choice of what responses to make.

Finally, I agree with you that MFB is doing to the Zionists (by which I think he means people who defend Israel’s actions in Palestine, not people who support Israel’s continued existance at all; perhaps he could clarify this point) what he accuses Zionists of doing to Palestinians. But the two things aren’t, as you seem to be implying, morally equivilent; Zionism (if I’m interpreting MFB’s meaning of the word correctly) is a political stance, not a race or ethnicity. Just as dislike of Republicans isn’t as bad as dislike of Jews, dislike of Zionists isn’t as bad as dislike of Palestinians.

However, that depends on what he means by “Zionist.” In these debates, people often refuse to acknowlege that the word is used for different meanings as an aggressive debate tactic.

I say this not to defend MFB (who seems happy to be undefended by me, and whose arguing style I think is counterproductive), but just to make the point.

* * *

Tara, to quote from my post, “Do I take a side? Yes. I’m not objective, and I’ve never claimed to be.”

So yeah, I disagree with Roger Simon’s version of events; I think it’s a thinly-disguised attempt to say “negotiation with Palestinians is impossible, and therefore whatever Israel does that seems to make negotiations harder or less likely is justified.”

Also, I think the “Palestinians/Arabs are the only people who refuse to negotiate” meme is obviously inconsistant with recent history; to quote my post again, “Israel walked away from negotiations at Taba (to reflect the newly-elected Sharon’s preference for non-negotiation at that time), when the Palestinians there were willing to continue. Israel ignored Saudi Arabia’s offer of recognition in exchange for withdrawal - it didn’t even attempt to use that offer as a starting point for discussions.”

In general, I think the “wah wah, poor victimized Israel” thought pattern is one of the most subtantial barriers to a negotiated peace. Most Israeli partisans can’t even see the point in not building a security wall in an obviously provocative fashion that sets up a border that no sane Palestinian leader could ever agree to; why bother doing something that would make negotiations possible, since it’s a given that for Israel to do such a thing is pointless?

Similarly, since most Israeli partisans refuse to acknowlege that Israel bears any portion of the blame for the failure of negotiations at Camp David and Taba, they beleive there is nothing Israel could do to alter its own behavior in order to make future negotiations more successful. This is an anti-peace, anti-negotiations stance; more to the point, it’s factually wrong. Even if you accept Roger’s version of events entirely, there is more Israel could have done; for instance, Israel could - and should - have offered one-to-one land swaps so that what was being offered was 100%, not 85%.

I think any story, on either side, that supports the conclusion “negotiations are pointless and peace is impossible” is horribly wrong, and is part of the problem.