Then I read this snippet from John McCreary's "Night Watch."
Israel: The BBC reported that during the handover ceremony between outgoing foreign minister Livni and her replacement Avigdor Lieberman, Lieberman announced “The Annapolis conference, it has no validity.” This is a reference to the US-sponsored peace conference in 2007. At Annapolis, the Israelis and Palestinians agreed to further discussions aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state.Perhaps it does.
This sets the tone of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s administration policy towards the Palestinians, as the first order of business. Under the influence of the Annapolis accords, rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip exceeded 100 a day, prompting Israel to execute Operation CAST LEAD. It would not unreasonable for the hard line Israelis to try another approach.
Reasoning by analogy, the closest that India and Pakistan came to settling the Kashmir dispute was when Musharraf, an active duty general was President in Pakistan and Prime Minister Vajpayee led the extreme Hindu nationalist BJP government in New Delhi. Lieberman’s approach should not necessarily be dismissed out of hand. Sometimes only hardliners have the credibility to make durable deals with enemies. This bears watching.
Regards — Cliff
PS: Note how the author refers to a military operation. Operation has the first letter capitalized. The name of the operation itself is all in CAPs. Properly done.
The downside to this kind of "credibility" is that a Republican administration bent on busting the national treasury encounters little to no effective opposition. (Not a coincidence that Republican Congressional opposition to bailouts and out-of-control federal spending only coalesced once Obama took over).
ReplyDeleteThe flip side is a Democratic administration bent on international belligerence. (It's no coincidence to me that effective opposition to our involvement in Vietnam didn't occur until Nixon, and Clinton had no trouble at all spending a trillion on new weapons and war tech that Dubya was so happy to play with during his sightseeing tours in Afghanistan and Iraq).