Arab Hearts and Minds
Well, thanks to President Barack Obama's initial goodwill offerings to Muslims worldwide in his early speeches in Turkey and Egypt, much was expected of him. Primarily, to set Israel on a back burner, and speed up the cooking project to alert the world of Islam that the West, and particularly the United States, owes it much, and respects it hugely. Intending, in all future interactions, to prove just that. And just that has proven to be immensely, compellingly, frustratingly, difficult.Fact is, much of the Arab world is prickly beyond belief, suspicious beyond endurance, aggrieved beyond resuscitation. And when one undertakes to build up expectations, exacting in the process a penalty on previous allies, while proven adversaries begin to enthuse about their will finally succeeding, the stage is set for some kind of upset. On the scales of justice sits on one side, one lonely, democratic, population-scant country. On the other roosts a host of autocratic and totalitarian rulers with their population-dense and democracy-less expectations.
Confusing the issue is an inability to scope out a potential end-game scenario that will satisfy all the principals. By-passing the sad and likely scenario that one does not exist. So then, should Israel painfully adjust itself to the reality that it must, by however means possible and impossible, wrack itself through the disassembling of all its West Bank settlements, who will guarantee that another Gaza will not result? And, should Israel agree to exit the West Bank, will the Palestinian Authority agree to shelf right of return and allow Israel its Jerusalem?
What is the point of moving into high-level and hopeful state-to-nascent-state talks reaching toward a mutual settlement of a high-focus and historically nasty clash between cultures, traditions, and religions, if not to have everything on the table, sans preconditions? If negotiation in good faith is the key to future possibilities, where is the good faith on both sides? Mutual trust absent the continual agitation to provocation leading to response?
This is that proverbial hard row to hoe without parallel.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Peace, Political Realities, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 04, 2009
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