Comments on: Call Abbas’s Bluff http://www.frumforum.com/call-abbass-bluff Building a conservatism that can win again Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:08:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: mlindroo http://www.frumforum.com/call-abbass-bluff/comment-page-1#comment-71801 mlindroo Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:50:00 +0000 http://www.frumforum.com/?p=15710#comment-71801 > International efforts to resolve the conflict have always focused on getting Israel > to make concessions to Arabs, which would supposedly encourage Arabs to make peace. > Yet the source of the trouble has always been found on the other side of the line: > the refusal of Israel’s neighbors to accept a Jewish state in their midst. It seems to me that the best option would be to force Israel to make concessions particularly regarding the occupied territories and Jerusalem (the 1967 annexation has really proved to be a Pyrrhic victory), in return for guarantees from the West that de facto carves the Jewish state in stone as a political entity. Things like U.S. military bases on Israeli soil and a defense pact, plus a favorable free trade deal with the European Union (currently the main source of imports and second most important export market) would ensure Israel's survival. If the Palestinians receive their own state as well, all but the most stubborn dead-enders on the Arab side ought to figure out things will not get better than this and they will never win. MARCU$ > International efforts to resolve the conflict have always focused on getting Israel
> to make concessions to Arabs, which would supposedly encourage Arabs to make peace.
> Yet the source of the trouble has always been found on the other side of the line:
> the refusal of Israel’s neighbors to accept a Jewish state in their midst.

It seems to me that the best option would be to force Israel to make concessions particularly regarding the occupied territories and Jerusalem (the 1967 annexation has really proved to be a Pyrrhic victory), in return for guarantees from the West that de facto carves the Jewish state in stone as a political entity. Things like U.S. military bases on Israeli soil and a defense pact, plus a favorable free trade deal with the European Union (currently the main source of imports and second most important export market) would ensure Israel’s survival.

If the Palestinians receive their own state as well, all but the most stubborn dead-enders on the Arab side ought to figure out things will not get better than this and they will never win.

MARCU$

]]> By: LFC http://www.frumforum.com/call-abbass-bluff/comment-page-1#comment-71800 LFC Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:48:18 +0000 http://www.frumforum.com/?p=15710#comment-71800 <i>International efforts to resolve the conflict have always focused on getting Israel to make concessions to Arabs, which would supposedly encourage Arabs to make peace.</i> That's what removal of the settlements in Gaza was supposed to be. That didn't work out so well. I can't see Israel making another concession after the total failure of the first one to achieve anything other than giving Hamas a solid base of operations. International efforts to resolve the conflict have always focused on getting Israel to make concessions to Arabs, which would supposedly encourage Arabs to make peace.

That’s what removal of the settlements in Gaza was supposed to be. That didn’t work out so well. I can’t see Israel making another concession after the total failure of the first one to achieve anything other than giving Hamas a solid base of operations.

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