One is being negotiated.
A short-term deal is certainly possible, I suppose. A long term deal, not so much. A permanent deal would likely involve both sides agreeing to give up positions that they've long said they wouldn't give up.
Egypt agreed to demilitarize the Sinai Peninsula in 1979 for sound reasons. It saved them a hell of a lot of money in both equipment and personnel costs. If the Israelis were to attack, it would take them days to move enough forces across the peninsula to be able to cross the Suez Canal, which would give the Egyptians time to mobilize. From the Israeli point of view, that also gave them a buffer zone, as Israel does not have the geography to allow them to repel an invader which has crossed the border.
For Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is not willing to accept an armed and hostile state as its close neighbor. The Palestinians aren't willing to accept having a militarily neutered country. The last time an Israeli prime minister was offering a serious deal, the Palestinians broke off negotiations, because (I suspect) they really didn't want any deal. The mood in Israel has changed since then, especially after the Seder Massacre in 2002.
Maybe there can be a deal reached eventually. I'm officially skeptical.
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3 comments:
Like dogs and cats. Once they learn to attack each other it becomes really hard to stop. Not to say it can't happen either.
w3ski
I think there will be 'peace' when Israel gets pissed and levels the place...
It doesn't really matter what the Palestinian people want, since they really don't have a seat at the table. Hamas does not represent the majority of the Palestinian people. Hamas has never won an election with the majority of the vote. They got a plurality in the 2006 elections, but never broke 50%.
Of course the same is true of Israel's current government, which is one reason why it's so dysfunctional (due to the need to put together a coalition that does have a majority), but that's another story.
As for negotiations, neither side is serious about negotiations. Israel won't talk to Hamas, they will only talk to Egypt. Hamas won't talk to Egypt, they will only talk to Iran. You end up with a game of telephone, where Hamas says something to Iran which says something to Egypt which says something to Israel, and then any reply goes the same route back. This kind of petulance on the part of both parties isn't the act of anybody who wants to negotiate, it's the act of someone who believes negotiation is pointless and thus why bother actually negotiating.
The core problem is what to do with the Palestinians. The current situation -- putting them in concentration camps surrounded by walls and razor wire -- is not long-term viable. Concentration camps are a time honored solution for dealing with insurgencies -- the US used them heavily in the Filipino-American War, for example (a war that has been written out of our history books, oddly enough, but it existed) -- but at some point you have to either release the concentration camp internees to... where? Or you end up with a Final Solution, whether deliberate or not. The US killed half a million Filipinos (at least) in the Luzon concentration camps through incompetence and embezzlement before they were finally disbanded in 1908. It was not a "Final Solution", but the dead didn't care that they weren't being deliberately starved to death, dead is dead...
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