Newsflash: Israel is responsible for their settlements

EDITORIAL: Diplomacy 101, New York Times, November 27, 2009

A very weak logic here: Obama blamed for Israel's unwillingness to halt settlements, as are the Palestinians, as are the Arabs. Everybody is guilty of holding up the peace process because they want Israel to stop the settlement building. We should have had back-up plans to Netanyahu completely blowing us off while continuing to take our $3B a year in aid--this is the helpful notion offered by the NYT.

Maybe Israel should halt the settlements. Maybe Israel and Israel alone is thus to be blamed for the current deadlock. Maybe any other logic is a bunch of obfuscation.

Comments

[stuart abrams]

It seems to me that Israeli intransigence and the rise of Turkey are complementary developments. Israel may try to live behind walls, but everybody else will then figure out ways of going around the walls. As the Afrikaaners discovered, life behind the walls under those circumstances is not much fun.