The fictions of the Middle East "peace process"

Jonah Goldberg:

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... it's that peace prize, won by Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for agreeing to the 1993 Oslo accords, that really captures the lunacy of it all. It's the perfect reminder for everyone, myself included, of the Arabs' refusal to yield to idealism, hope or good intentions - and the West's refusal to recognize reality.

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing," former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser once said. But from the U.S. point of view, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Maybe they just don't want what we're selling?

For example, in 2005, Israel simply gave Gaza to the Palestinians. According to the international community's land-for-peace mantra, a peaceful society should have sprouted like a stalk from Jack's magic beans. Instead, the Palestinian people voted for a band of Islamic fanatics - even the European Union calls them terrorists, not that it matters much - dedicated to the destruction of Israel. But the diplomacy-uber-alles crowd has long been immune to contrary evidence. Remember when Arafat fanned the second intifada in response to an unprecedented peace offer? Members of the Nobel committee openly talked of revoking the peace prize - from Peres.

Now, President Bush, the leaders of the EU and the editors of the New York Times all say this is the moment for Israel to offer more concessions to Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas. So much for the fresh-from-Iraq cliche that it's pointless to choose sides in a civil war.

Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary, lamented, "Once again, extremists carrying guns have prevented progress against the wishes of the majority who seek a peaceful two-state solution." But how do you square this with the fact that Hamas, the party promising the destruction of Israel, won the Palestinian elections in 2005? Meanwhile, the leaders of Fatah - the "moderates" - had not long ago set the standard for Israel-hatred themselves.

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But there's another, perhaps more important, lesson to be drawn from the Hamas ascendancy. The Bush administration pushed for democracy in the Palestinian territories and got what it wished for - in spades. The assumption behind the push for democracy in Gaza and in Iraq is that Arabs can be trusted to handle political freedom. Even the Democrats demanding an immediate pullout from Iraq hope that with democracy, the Iraqis will be able to sort out their problems themselves via some euphemistic "political solution." That is unless the antiwar Democrats are really advocating turning all of Mesopotamia into one giant Gaza Strip - the far more likely result of U.S. withdrawal.

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Democracy does have a way of forcing people to take responsibility for their decisions unless they are Palestinians or Democrats. Do the Palestinians regret their vote for the Hamas death cult. Probably so. Hamas probably regrets it too, since they actually have to take responsibility too.

The group has sent its propagandist out to write op-eds for the New York Times and Washington Post today to make the case that they are reasonable people who are willing to postpone their genocide against the Israelis for a few years if we will just give them survival funds. This is caused by the Israeli and US embrace of the Fatah group they chased out fo Gaza. It is looking like a hollow victory at this point. Perhaps they should be writing their op-eds in Tehran where their actions have more backing.