The term “peace process” is one I have come to despise. (I hate it even more than “exit strategy”.) This idea that American can find, or impose, some sort of peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is a fantasy.

Jennifer Rubin says,

If there has been a less competent Middle East negotiating team, I can’t recall it.

They aren’t showering themselves in glory, that’s for sure. But I have to ask a deeper question: Why are we Americans even involved in this?

If both the Israelis and Palestinians truly want peace with each other, then they can negotiate an agreement without our help. And if they don’t both want peace, there isn’t anything we can do about the situation. That’s what the last 35 years of futile efforts on our part have shown. So why are we wasting our time like this?

President after president has sent negotiating teams to the two sides, and what have they accomplished? Not a thing. There has been change, but no fundamental improvement, and no peace.

The problem is the Palestinians. Deep down, the only peace they’ll accept is victory, where peace is attained through the destruction of Israel. As long as they continue to feel that way, peace isn’t attainable any other way. (And there’s no reason to believe that the Palestinians will ever gain the military capability to win against Israel.)

The way you’ll know that the Palestinians have finally gotten serious is when they abandon their demand for the “right of return”. As long as that’s one of their requirements for a peace treaty, there will be no peace treaty. It is the one concession Israel can and will never make, for it amounts to voluntary extinction for Israel as it exists now.

Until the Palestinians abandon that demand, negotiation is a waste of time, and American involvement in those negotiations is a fool’s quest.

But, alas, The One has been engaging in a lot of fool’s quests lately.

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