The over rated "peace process"

Max Boot:

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To be skeptical of the peace process is not to suggest that such never-ending strife is desirable, but merely to acknowledge that it may be inevitable. The contrary view--that even a conflict as intractable as this one should end soon--rests on a sunny, if ahistorical, Enlightenment faith that peace is the natural order of things and war a temporary aberration.

There is also a uniquely American perspective at work here: We normally fight short wars overseas, with even our longest conflict, Vietnam, lasting less than a decade (1965-73) if measured by the deployment of ground forces. Win or lose, we are used to having the shooting end within a few years. Given this outlook, many Americans believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has been raging in one form or another for 60 years, is overdue for resolution.

But if measured by the length of other tribal and territorial disputes throughout history, there is no reason to think that the Arabs and Jews will soon beat their swords into plowshares. Consider just one such conflict, pitting the Scots against the English. The divide between the two nationalities--with similar religions (first Catholic, then Protestant), ethnic origins, languages and political systems--should have been easily bridged. But the Scots and English spent centuries killing one another.

War broke out in 1296 after King Edward I of England tried to claim the empty throne of Scotland. This sparked a prolonged resistance led first by William Wallace and then, after his execution, by Robert Bruce. Both the Scots and the English resorted to terrorist tactics, with frequent burning, looting and killing on both sides.

This savagery was evident early on: In 1297 William Heselrig, the English sheriff of the small town of Lanark, burned down a house belonging to Wallace's wife or girlfriend, Marion Braidfute, killing her and everyone else inside. Wallace's riposte is recorded in a medieval chronicle: "Gathering together a band of desperate men, he fell by night on the sheriff and his armed guard, hewed the sheriff into small pieces with his own sword and burned the buildings and those within them."

Some scholars have cast doubt on elements of this traditional tale (which was dramatized in Mel Gibson's 1995 film, "Braveheart"), but there is no doubting the ferocity or frequency of such small-scale clashes. There were also some major battles--the Scots prevailed at Stirling Bridge (1297) and Bannockburn (1314), the English at Falkirk (1298), Halidon Hill (1333) and numerous later battlefields--but none proved decisive. Scotland was too small and poor to defeat England. And English monarchs lacked the resources or the will to pacify the prickly Scots. So the war ground on, century after century, interrupted occasionally by truces and treaties.

The accession of a Scottish monarch to the throne of England in 1603 as King James I might have been expected to end the strife. Yet the two realms clashed again during the English Civil War in the 1640s. The conflict did not truly end until 1745, when a revolt by mainly Scottish supporters of the Stuarts (descendants of James I), was put down--449 years after the start of Anglo-Scottish hostilities.

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Lost in all that conflict is that the Scots were better off after the reconciled with England, but that is not an enduring message since they are currently looking to separate themselves again. I highly recommend Thomas Sowell's Conquest and Culture on the rise in the standard of living of the Scots after they adopted the English culture.

One of the things the Israelis have going for them in their never ending conflict with the Palestinians is that the Palestinian Muslims are never going to be smart enough to adopt the Israeli culture. I am not talking about religion as such but the way they organize their life and approach commerce.

Palestinians have ignored commerce for 60 years while building their society on victimhood and the charity of others. They are a beggar society who value teaching their kids to explode around Israelis more than teaching them enterprise. The Palestinian culture of hate and religious bigotry is making them a prisoner of the poverty it produces. As Gaza has demonstrated it is not occupation that holds them back but their own culture.