should he start declaring that we will know if a two-state solution will succeed within the next 6 months. We don't want Atrios to have to start tracking more FU's (Friedman Units).

Two-state solution is no solution with the existing concept of State.

Divide according to what?

"divide and rule" is an out of date policy, modern day policy should be
"let the SPEEs rule themselves and orchestrate the SPEEs to create a new civilisation".

But the US is incapable to apply this policy because her constitution is based on pseudo concept of State. You _have to_ re-write your constitution before youassume the position of Chef d'Orchestre and don't forget there are others who will to take that position, so be quick to recompose your Constitution accordingly;->>

Stephen, it is promising that you started to use "will" in relation to FP, but that is not enough Mate, you have to give up the concept "state" and "nation" for they became useless. In place of them use SPEE. Also introduce the concepts "law/constitution", "leadership", "culture", "race, population, language, economic resources" into your language of FP. You already have the concept "power" but you have to relate it to "race, population, language, economic resources". Of cource those modifications lead you to re-compose your theory of FP.

Grand Sen~or

Israel has added another 70,000 settlers since 2001, and the Bush administration never took any serious action to stop them. The question you might ask yourself is: why not?

Er, perhaps because there is absolutely nothing illegal about Jewish settlements in the disputed territories. The last definitive and still operative international legal resolution -- adopted by the League of Nations and grandfathered across to the United Nations -- grants Jews the right to settle anywhere west of the Jordan River in the 22% of the original Palestine Mandate. The British had already lopped off 78% of the original Mandate east of the Jordan and handed it to the Hashemite Arabs in violation of their original commitment.

when Oslo collapsed, Friedman's columns helped spread the false claim that PLO leader Yasser Arafat had turned down a great deal and was solely responsible for the failure

Dennis Ross and Bill Clinton have stated the same and they were actually there. More than one can say for the author of this post.

What was the United States doing while all those settlers were moving into the West Bank? The answer: we were helping pay for it

And what was Yasser Arafat and the PA doing during the same period? The answer: masterminding terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. (Paid for with US and European tax money donated to the PA).

our policies that have helped drive some otherwise unlikely allies together and given them an issue they can exploit for their own reasons.

As if the Arabs and Islamists needed any reason to remain intractably hostile on the issue of Israeli sovereignty.

Iran supports Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups in part to pressure the United States to acknowledge its legitimate security interests in the Persian Gulf

Iran sees itself as General and purveyor of a global Islamic revolution resulting in a new world order where Shia Islam is dominant and pervasive. A viable nuclear arms program and subsequent destruction of Israel are key to that objective.

Achieving a two-state solution would remove one of the issues that Iran is using to bolster its regional position.

Yes, Israel.

Encouraging Israel and Syria to finalize their peace treaty -- an agreement whose main elements have been in place for nearly a decade -- would end Syria's support for Hezbollah and Hamas and drive a wedge between Syria and Iran.

And the evidence for this is ...? Certainly not the historical record nor any recognition of either the Syrian regime's need to sustain Israel as an enemy in order to retain power or Iran's Islamo-imperialist ambitions.

the prospect of diminishing Iranian and Syrian backing would force Hamas to confront some hard choices -- i.e., on recognizing Israel's right to exist

Hamas' raison d'etre is the destruction of Israel. Without that objective, the group would cease to exist. One would have a better chance reversing the spin on an electron.

Tom Friedman almost gets it

In his many years of frolicking prose, Friedman has been accurate less often than a broken clock. With regard the ME conflict in particular, he suffers from selective amnesia in that he completely ignores (as does the author of this post) 60 years of Palestinian perfidy and terrorism in response to every agreement and offer of settlement from Israel.

Thank you for your sober comments on proposal, Dr Walt.

Many people, myself included, wonder why the conflict is still a conflict, why Israel did not take up the Arab League proposal early, which would have accomplished all of the foreign policy objectives you site, in one coherent process.

I saw a you-tube presentation of Norman Finkelstein last night from a lecture on Thursday at U of Edmonton. His conclusion was that Israel never had any intention of entering any substantive peace agreement, that Oslo, Wye River, Taba, Annapolis, were all photo-ops and fraudulent posturing.

I find that analysis to be too simplistic (if I conveyed his conclusion accurately, which I think I did).

There are electoral and active critical political stability issues in Gaza, West Bank, Israel, Lebanon. Israelis are afraid of a peace agreement that includes Hamas, if Hamas' electoral victory is permanent. Even Barak's proposal would have faced a great difficulty to pass the Israeli Knesset, if agreed by Arafat (and he would have had an extremely difficult time passing the Paletinian parliament).

The settlers in Israel currently hold an effective veto over governmental decisions, with the deeply divided Israeli electorate (that requires a deep and highly compromising coalition to govern).

In Haaretz today, there was an article reporting that Egypt's envoy to Hamas expressed to them that facing Netanyahu as prime minister with the coalition that he would convene, would be a disaster for ALL goals of Hamas and Palestinians seeking statehood or anything resembling civil rights.

As in the Lebanon 2006 war, with Gaza there is a great divide as to how to interpret the originating events and therefore the subsequent excessive/deterrent Israeli use of force. Individuals that followed the developments closely from day to day, that read the same newspapers together, derived 180 degree different conclusions as to the events.

The one point that both Friedman and Walt made, was of the reality and feeling urgency on the part of the parties now, before Israeli elections, and before 2010 Palestinian elections.

Very nicely put, too bad Friedman will never get it. He almost never does. Although, I would question a point or two. As I remember it Arafat and the PLO came to land for peace and the two-state solution (which Israel rejected for years) without US involvement, in fact, caught the US by surprise. I would also point out that demanding Hamas recognize Israel's RIGHT to exist is very different from Hamas recognizing Israel's existence, which they already have done, if not de jure than de facto. Further, the right to exist as what? An apartheid state? A ethnic enclave hostile to all who don't fit the bill? To demand that they recognize Israel's right to exist is also to demand that Hamas recognize that Israel had a right to do all they have done to the Palestinians, which they never will do and who can blame them? In addition, any formal recognition of Israel should come about through negotiations between Israel and the sovereign state of Palestine. There is no law that requires any state or political entity to recognize another. This is purely a matter for diplomacy and negotiations. To demand that Hamas or the PLO give up every one of its few cards in order just to sit at the negotiating table is to throw the game to Israel from the start.

Those who misrepresent the meaning of language, a la George Orwell, through misuse of such terms as "apartheid" or "collective persecution" with respect to Israel (both terms having been defined by the International Court of Justice) suggest themselves as propagandists, not rational interlocutors.

What is more, a dispassionate examination of the facts shows that it is many Arab States, as well as the Palestiniansr, who actually satisfy the iCJ's definition of the above terms, not Israel.

It is a tired old propaganda trick to accuse the other of one's own crimes. That recognition is thousands of years old, and is often referred to as projecting the mote in one's eye onto another,

When I matched the following statement of yours with your photo next to it

From a realist's standpoint, therefore, the obvious strategy is one of "divide-and-rule" (except that we aren't seeking to rule the region; we're just trying to protect certain key strategic interests).

I think you are really kidding the Bloggers and enjoy it with your Mona Lisa smile;->>

I like your sense of humour;->>

In other words that is another Thought Experiment of yours to find out who is going to suck it;->
But why do you waste your time with petty TEs,why don't you go for the biggy, the historically monumental one;-> A Thought Experiment based on a re-composed Constitution?!

Stephen!
You _can_ do it Mate! If you _will_!

Grand Sen~or

Historians often quote A.E. Housman to the effect that "accuracy is a duty, not a virtue." As E.H. Carr put it: "To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building."

Professor Walt claims that

when Oslo collapsed, Friedman's columns helped spread the false claim that PLO leader Yasser Arafat had turned down a great deal"

According to Elsa Walsh, in The New Yorker for March 24, 2003, when Dennis Ross (contemporaneously) showed the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, President Clinton's "talking papers" for Clinton's Peace Parameters (late December 2000), Bandar "recognized" that "gave Arafat almost everything he wanted" (P. 55). Robert Malley, reviewing Dennis Ross's book The Missing Peace for The New York Review of Books, commented that

"Arafat had the best deal he could ever get. He could not get more and he had hit the proverbial wall. At the time, this was quite clear to American and to Israeli leaders. And in hindsight, it is now painfully clear to many more, including Palestinians."

As Bernie Avishai, whose articles I join Professor Walt in recommending, notes "[f]or the record, the Israeli government under Ehud Barak accepted these principles in December 2000[.]" Bernie charitably says that "Yasir Arafat dragged his feet [and] accepted them with reservations[.]"

But those involved at the time understood Arafat to have rejected the Clinton Parameters. Abu Ala (Ahmed Qurei), a senior Palestinian leader and subsequent Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, told The Guardian

We can't accept Clinton's ideas as a basis for future negotiations or a future settlement. Clinton didn't take (Palestinian leader, Yasser) Arafat's reservations into account, and these ideas don't offer our people their legitimate rights[.]"

(The Guardian, Janaury 8, 2001, Palestinians reject peace plan as Israelis protest)

According to The New Yorker article mentioned above, Prince Bandar and the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. tried to persuade Arafat to accept the Clinton Parameters. Indeed, Arafat reportedly assured them that he would do so. Thus, when Bandar met with Arafat and learned that he had rejected the offer

"Bandar believed that . . . Arafat . . . was committing a crime against the Palestinians - in fact, against the entire region. If it weren't so serious, Bandar thought, it would be a comedy."

Distinguished Ha'aretz columnist Akiva Eldar writes that the first time Arafat accepted the Clinton Parameters was in an interview with Eldar on June 20, 2002. (Ha'aretz, June 21, 2005.) By then, of course, and in large measure due to the collapse of the Oslo peace process and outbreak of the Second Intifada, Israelis had elected Ariel Sharon in place of Ehud Barak as prime minister.

None of this alters the overwhelming fact that, as Bernie Avishai, among many others, writes, the Clinton Peace Parameters offer "the only way out of" the "trap" in which we and the parties now find ourselves. And, as I e-mailed Bernie between the appearance of his two articles, "if I correctly understand you to be arguing that the U.S. should be negotiating actively to achieve a peace settlement based on the Clinton Parameters (and the Geneva Initiative), rather than trying merely to facilitate the parties, I, of course, agree with you."

But nor do any faults on the American or Israeli sides excuse Professor Walt's carelessness with important facts.

Finally, please note that I am not arguing that Barak's offer at Camp David represented a deal that Arafat should be blamed for having rejected. But Barak's offer surely formed a basis for further discussion. At the very least, Arafat should have made a counter-offer. For not doing that, or doing something else keep the summit from breaking up, Arafat deserves criticism. Indeed, as Professor Slater, on whom Professor Walt relies, shows, that essentially was Tom Friedman's position in October 2000:

What he should have done, Friedman argued, was to have built on Barak’s “opening bid” and continue the negotiations; instead, Arafat preferred “to play the victim rather than the statesman,” and sought to “provoke the Israelis into brutalizing the Palestinians again” (Arafat’s War, October 13, 2000).

Friedman emphasized: "Other world leaders told Mr. Arafat the same thing: Barak deserves a serious counteroffer." Indeed, Friedman did not call Barak's offer "generous." Friedman did write, however:

"Frankly, the Israeli checkpoints and continued settlement-building are oppressive. But what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse to acknowledge is that today's Israeli prime minister was offering them a dignified exit. It was far from perfect for Palestinians, but it was a proposal that, with the right approach, could have been built upon and widened. Imagine if when Mr. Sharon visited the Temple Mount, Mr. Arafat had ordered his people to welcome him with open arms and say, 'When this area is under Palestinian sovereignty, every Jew will be welcome, even you, Mr. Sharon.' Imagine the impact that would have had on Israelis."

If "realism" requires starting with the world as it is, and facts as they are, then, at least on the evidence of his present essay, Professor Walt is not much of a realist.

Contrary to you and Friedman the talks did not end at Camp David but continued at Taba where great progress was made. It was Israel who at Taba walked away at every excuse, while the PLO continued to negotiate, no matter what. Israel finally walked away for good, stating that no agreements reached at Taba could be used as a basis for any future negotiations.

It should also be noted that Shlomo Ben Ami, who was also at Camp David, has stated that if he had been Arafat he also would have turned down the Camp David offer. Barak himself was quoted in the Israeli press as saying "I made them an offer they couldn't accept."

My extensive discussion of the December 2000 Clinton Parameters should have made clear my understanding that the Oslo peace process did not end with Camp David in July.

Re: the alleged Barak quote, please provide a verifiable source or, at least, the full context.

Re: Ben-Ami, I wrote:

I am not arguing that Barak's offer at Camp David represented a deal that Arafat should be blamed for having rejected. But Barak's offer surely formed a basis for further discussion.

Re: Taba, your unsourced claims do not jibe with the sources I've read. Also, you ignore the fact that the Taba negotiations occurred on the eve of Israeli elections that, thanks in large measure to Arafat et al., Barak was sure to lose. Indeed, in one of the articles by Bernie Avishai that Professor Walt commends to us, he states that Arafat only accepted the Taba Plan "[l]ater in 2002, as the violence spread[.]" Bernie's link, which I have reproduced, is to an article from The Guardian of June 22, 2002, entitled, "Arafat approves Taba plan too late". (Actually, the article seems to refer to the Akiva Eldar interview I mentioned in my original comment.)

Regardless of what you think of Friedman's content, he does have a way with pithy, memorable phrases. Like this one:

Because without a stable two-state solution, what you will have is an Israel hiding behind a high wall, defending itself from a Hamas-run failed state in Gaza, a Hezbollah-run failed state in south Lebanon and a Fatah-run failed state in Ramallah. Have a nice day.

At this point, I figure this is what the situation will probably evolve into. It'll probably stay that way forever until the Palestinians start a South Africa-style struggle for equal rights in Israel, assuming they ever do. In the meantime, Israel gets the joy of underfunding everything else except for defense, and becoming more of a dependency for US military supplies.

A number of readers have made some interesting points in thw above discussion, but some of them rest on a careless reading of what I wrote. I criticized Friedman for spreading the myth that Yasser Arafat "turned down a great deal and was solely responsible for the collapse of the Oslo process." I wasn't absolving Arafat of his own blunders; my point was that Friedman's past accounts of what happened have been factually incorrect and have contributed to the widespread belief that Israel has "no partner for peace." It's true that Ross and Clinton blamed Arafat (after persuading Arafat to come to Camp David by promising that he would not be blamed if it failed), but they are hardly objective witnesses and virtually all the other participants (and most neutral observers) maintain that the Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians all contributed to Oslo's failure. See, among many other sources, Clayton Swisher, THE TRUTH ABOUT CAMP DAVID; Malley and Agha,"Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS; Shlomo Ben-Ami SCARS OF WAR, WOUNDS OF PEACE; Charles Enderlin, SHATTERED DREAMS; Aaron David Miller, THE MUCH TOO PROMISED LAND; Ron Pundak, "From Oslo to Taba: What Went Wrong?" SURVIVAL, or Jeremy Pressman, "Visions in Collision," INTERNATIONAL SECURITY. Each of these authors assign blame somewhat differently, but all of them make it clear that Arafat and the Palestinians were hardly "solely responsible" for the failure. As for whether the Camp David offer was a "great deal," suffice it to say that the Palestinians would have eventually received at most 91 percent of the West Bank, having previously agreed at Oslo to recognize Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of the original territory of mandate Palestine. In effect, they were now being asked to accept at most 91 percent of the remaining 22 percent. Moreover, Barak's best offer did not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank and would have kept Israeli forces in the Jordan river valley for between 6 and 21 years afterward, with no assurance they would ever leave, and would have left the Palestinians permanently disarmed and vulnerable to their Israeli neighbor, along with a host of other restrictions. Perhaps that is why Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Foreign Minister at Camp David, later told an interviewer that if he were a Palestinian he "would have rejected Camp David as well." The "Clinton Parameters" of December 2000 were clearly much better, but they also left a lot of ambiguities to be resolved. And that's why BOTH sides accepted them with significant reservations. (Barak outlined his in a 20-page single spaced document.) White House spokesman Jake Siewert announced on January 3, 2000 that "both sides have now accepted the President's ideas with some reservations," and Clinton confirmed this point in a speech to the Israel Policy Forum four days later. And as other commenters have observed, it was the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who broke off the subsequent Taba negotiations prior to the election that brought Ariel Sharon to power. For documentation of Friedman's distortions of these events, see Jerome Slater's recent article in Tikkun, which I linked to in my original post.

In effect, they were now being asked to accept at most 91 percent of the remaining 22 percent. Moreover, Barak's best offer did not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank and would have kept Israeli forces in the Jordan river valley for between 6 and 21 years afterward, with no assurance they would ever leave, and would have left the Palestinians permanently disarmed and vulnerable to their Israeli neighbor, along with a host of other restrictions.

The fact that lots of Israel-supporters and even so-called moderates don't realize the problem with the Camp David arrangement always amazes me. Israel was giving Palestinians 91% of what they already had, with all those pleasant restrictions in the West Bank, and expecting the Palestinians to be thankful for it.

The pro-israeli guys here are putting up a weak argument, but out of all of them i would say that another american tries the best out of all of them. OK lets start at camp david what was being offered to the palestinians was about 91 percent of the west bank some outer suburbs in east jerusalem nothing substantial and all of gaza. Its very important that we dont get hung up on the percentages since the nuances of teh agreement are also very important. So lets talk about these nuances, the palestinians were offered only about 76 percent upfront and the rest coming i thinks between 10-25 years. Another thing, they wouldnt have any control over their airspace, coastal waters, Israel can deploy their troops in Palestinian territories under a national emergency and there would be a road going from jerusalem to the Jordan border which the Palestinians can use but Israel has the right to close under a national emergency. Ok without going any further i think we can realize the Palestinians weren't really offered nuch of a state at camp David they were basically offered an autonomous colony. Oh yea and the camp david also divided the west bank into seperate cantons. So camp david wasa complete joke thats why Shlomo ben Ami said he would reject it if he were a palestinian. Ok now lets go to the Clinton Parameters, which were better but one needs to pay careful attention to the details. It offered 95 percent of the west bank and a land swap that would add up to 97 percent. But we have to examine this land swap the land that Israel wanted to retain the 5 percent of the west bank consists of the arable land that contains water resources as well. So the Palestinians didnt want a land swap becuase they were getting land in the negev desert next to gaza for high quality west bank land. Secondly Israel would have the right to early warning stations on Palestinian territory. On east Jerusalem what is arab is palestinian and what is jewish is israeli. ON paper this ounds good but digging a little deeper this is another concession the palestinians have to make since Israelis have been trying over the years to establish facts on the ground to deny Arabs building permits and increase jewish presence in the city and now they would be rewarded for doing so. Ok now lets talk about both sides and their reactions the Palestinians did have strong reservations and they anted further negotiations on the parameters, which is exactly what Taba was about. And at Taba their was progress made there is the unofficial EU report on Taba which people should read which states that. And it was Barak who called off Taba to prepare for the elections, now that doesn;t let the israelis off the hook, it might let Barak of the hook somewhat (i'll elaborate on this point later) but it doesn't get israel off the hook because the new leader could have continued negotiations with teh Palestinians who were still there. Ok all this incessant debate about Camp David and Taba leaves out a crucial framework we should be basing our arguments on and that is international law. in 2004 the ICJ ( international court of justice) ruled in their ruling on the Separation barrier that the West Bank and east Jerusalem and Gaza are Occupied territories not disputed territories that the Israelis claim they are. It also states that all the settlements are illegal. Furthermore we are ignoring the fact that there is an international consensus on this issue, every year since 1967 they have a vote at the UN general assembly its called peaceful settlement of the Palestinian question which states that israel has to make a full withdrawal to pre june 1967 lines and find a just settlement of the refugee problem. And every year the vote is about 155-165 in favor and about 5-10 in opposition the opposition includes israel and the US which kills the resolution, so what the arab league announced in 2002 wasn't anything new, the only thing new was that they offered normalization instead of peace which sweetened the deal. So when we say generous we have to look at it in the framework of international law offering 95 percent of the west bank is not generous because they have to withdraw from all of the west bank, splitting east jerusalem is not generous because it was illegal to annex it in the first place. And keeping 80 percnet of the settlers is not generous since ll the settlements are illegal in the first place. As to the point of why did the palestinians not make a counter offer they did they just simply pointed to the international consensus the entire time. All they wanted was a full withdrawal and a viable state, the fact that they were negotiating for less means they are the ones making concessions not the other way around.