Eyes Wide Open, But Unable To See

Peace=Capitulation - The Neverending Process.

It must be hard to be Condoleezza Rice. Being the umpteenth envoy assigned to bang your head against the wall called “Mideast peace” is hardly enviable. Each trip, she must hold up the flimsiest straw — last week, the fact of a meeting — and call it progress.

From Rice’s point of view, the situation must seem quite absurd. She must ask herself, don’t the Palestinians realize that if they just stop “struggling” they can have the state they are struggling for? Perhaps she wonders: why don’t Israelis see that, if they just put their cards on the table, the Palestinians are exhausted and ready for a deal?

In Western eyes, peace is so obviously desirable that the idea that it could be seen negatively is rarely considered. But try, for a moment, to look at the situation through Arab eyes. Peace would be the ultimate ratification of Israel’s existence. It would be seen as an abject surrender to the West’s bid to dominate the Arabs.

When it comes to a “political horizon,” the problem is not that the Arabs cannot see a Palestinian state, but that they can see a Jewish one.