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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 27-Nov-07
Mideast summit in Annapolis has feel of act of desperation

Web Log - November, 2007

Mideast summit in Annapolis has feel of act of desperation

No one appears to have any expectations whatsoever -- talking just to talk.

The last major Mideast peace initiative of the Bush administration begins on Tuesday in Annapolis, as leaders of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and even Syria sit down to talk.

If there's anybody anywhere who believes that this summit meeting will actually accomplish anything, I haven't seen it or read about it.

Instead, those who favor the initiative are saying it's the beginning of a process, consisting of additional meetings in the future, to eventually come to a Mideast peace solution -- two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian, living side by side in joy and peace and harmony.

However, this "process" has begun a number of times in the past. Major examples include the Oslo accordings in 1994, President Clinton's 14-day Camp David summit get-together in 2000, and the Mideast Roadmap to Peace in 2003.

These and other initiatives have all failed completely -- even when an agreement was reached, things only got worse afterwards.

In fact, on May 1, 2003, when the Mideast Roadmap to Peace was announced, I predicted that the Roadmap would fail, the Mideast would becoming increasingly chaotic, leading to a major genocidal war between Arabs and Jews that would re-fight the genocidal war of 1948-49, following the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

Since 2003, and especially since the death of Yasser Arafat, it's hard to find a single day when the situation was not measurably worse than it was the previous day.

In fact, things have been getting worse and worse pretty steadily since the first Intifada in the late 1980s. President Clinton held several summit meetings with Mideast leaders during his Presidency, and things only got worse, especially after the disastrous Camp David meeting in 2000. President Bush has held no summit meetings until now, and things have only gotten worse. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it doesn't make any difference whether you hold summit meetings or not -- things will get worse either way.

Indeed, each day that passes makes any kind of agreement less likely. Why? Because the people who most want an agreement are the generations that survived the 1949 war, and who see an agreement as the best way to prevent any such disaster from occurring again, and every day, more and more of those survivors die. Left behind are younger generations, most of whom are convinced that the only way to resolve the issue is to have victory over the other side.

Here are some of the current roadblocks to a peace agreement:

Hamas will not agree to recognize Israel's right to exist, and Hamas is probably more powerful today than the "official" Palestinian government. Furthermore, Hamas is not even attending the Annapolis meeting.

There are many Palestinian terrorist groups shooting rockets into Israel. They are not willing to stop this activity.

Israelis would have to give up their West Bank settlements, the Golan Heights, and parts or all of Jerusalem, and they will not do that. Apart from purely emotional issues, this would require thousands of Jews to move, and would expose the Israeli population to even closer range rockets from terrorist groups.

Any agreement to a two-nation solution would require the Palestinian nation to be one contiguous peace of land. The current Palestinian territories are split into two separate parts, Gaza and the West Bank, and Palestinians cannot travel freely between them.

Palestinians would have to give up their "right to return," meaning that they would be able to re-occupy the land that their grandparents lived on. The Palestinians will not agree to that.

It's worth pointing out that the trends on all of the above issues is that they've gotten worse and more intractable; there is no indication of an improvement in any area that I'm aware of.

In fact, as I've pointed out many times, the governments of countries that fought in World War II as a crisis war are all becoming increasingly paralyzed. This is true of the United States, France, Japan, and other countries. The reason is that the the post-war generations, like America's Boomer generation, don't have any skills for leading and governing. This also applies to the Israelis and Palestinians. So even an agreement like the Oslo accords could not be repeated now.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Mideast is going in one and only one direction: Toward a major new war between Arabs and Jews, refighting the genocidal war of the late 1940s. And the new war will pull in the United States and numerous other countries that will be forced to choose sides between the two warring enemies. (27-Nov-07) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 27-Nov-07 Mideast summit in Annapolis has feel of act of desperation

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 27-Nov-07
Mideast summit in Annapolis has feel of act of desperation