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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 4-Apr-2014
4-Apr-14 World View -- Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks'

Web Log - April, 2014

4-Apr-14 World View -- Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks'

Chicago has coldest winter on record

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Chicago has coldest winter on record
Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks'
Pakistan government flip-flops and frees 19 Taliban militants from jail

Chicago has coldest winter on record

Chicago's Blizzard of 1967 (Chicago Tribune)

Chicago's Blizzard of 1967 (Chicago Tribune)

The average temperature in Chicago over the last four months was 22 degrees Fahrenheit, with a record 26 days at or below zero, and over 80 inches of snow, making 2013-04 the coldest winter on record. The second coldest winter was 1903-04, when the average temperature was 22.3.

Weather forecasts for the early spring are for below average temperatures. CBS Chicago

Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks'

Israel has canceled the release from Israeli jails of the last of the four groups of Palestinian prisoners who has been convicted of terrorist acts prior to the 1994 Oslo accords. Releasing these prisoners, whom Palestinian officials refer to as "political prisoners," was a pre-condition to getting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to agree to participate in the "peace talks" that the Obama administration and Secretary of State John Kerry had been pushing last month.

The last batch of prisoners was scheduled for releast last week on Friday, and the self-imposed deadline for the "peace talks" to reach a conclusion is April 29. But both sides have been playing brinkmanship with the April 29 date approaching. Abbas demanded that hundreds more prisoners be released. Then Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed last Friday's prison release. On Wednesday, Abbas applied to 15 United Nations agencies as the State of Palestine. Now, on Thursday, Netanyahu has canceled the prisoner release permanently. Whether these actions on both sides are final or temporary negotiating tactics is not known.

Kerry is said to be very downcast. He was very optimistic nine months ago, thinking that he and President Obama, the latter being the smartest person in the room, no matter what the room, thought that they would become the greatest politicians in history by bringing peace to the Mideast. But now Kerry is quoted as saying that there's nothing more he can do, and adds, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." The "peace talks" were never anything more than a show anyway, and were considered a joke throughout the Mideast.

I've been writing about this for over ten years, since May 2003 when President George Bush issued his "Mideast Roadmap to Peace." From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, peace in the Mideast is impossible, and that the Arabs and the Jews will be re-fighting their genocidal war that began last time in 1947 with the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The traumatized survivors of that war spent their lives doing everything they could to keep anything so horrible from happening to the children and grandchildren, and they succeeded in that. But now almost all of those survivors are gone, with the major exception being Mahmoud Abbas himself, and the younger generations have no hesitancy in risking steps that could spiral into all out war. When Abbas retires or dies, then the last major obstacle to such a war will be removed.

The smartest man in the room thinks that he can heal the earth, roll back the tides, and bring peace to the Mideast because he believes that politicians control events. As I've said many times, it's a basic principle of Generational Dynamics that even in a dictatorship, major policies and events are determined by masses of people, entire generations of people, and not by politicians. Thus, Hitler was not the cause of WW II. What politicians say or do is irrelevant, except insofar as their actions reflect the attitudes of the people that they represent, and so politicians can neither cause nor prevent the great events of history. I invoked this principal in my report three days ago when I wrote that the Russian public may force president Vladimir Putin to order the invasion of Ukraine:

"The Russian people are experiencing passions of ferocious intensity to achieve victories that prove Russia's "greatness." If Putin is forced to back down in any way in Ukraine, it could be politically disastrous for him. Instead, he may have to find a way to maximize the "shock and awe" from his next strike."

In the case of the Mideast, a peace deal will be blocked not by the politicians but by the people, especially young people. Young people in Palestinian militias, in Gaza, or in Palestinian refugee camps, for example, will never go along with any "peace agreement." Israel has populations of settlers who refuse to give up their settlement homes, populations of Orthodox Jews who believe that control of the region is their sacred destiny, and populations of ordinary people that fear that a "peace deal" would only mean more terrorist attacks on Israel.

So from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a Mideast peace deal really is impossible. BBC and Daily Times (Pakistan)

Pakistan government flip-flops and frees 19 Taliban militants from jail

Freeing prisoners in exchange for "peace talks" seems to be the theme in Pakistan, as well as in the Mideast. The Taliban announced a one-month ceasefire on March 1, nominally to give "peace talks" with the government a chance.

The Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban - TTP) have been demanding that hundreds of Taliban militants being help in Pakistan's jailed be freed, in exchange for continuing the "peace talks." Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has consistently denied that he would agree to release prisoners, but on Thursday it emerged that he's been releasing Taliban prisoners all along -- three on March 21, five on March 25th, and 11 on March 28. The prisoners are described as "non-combatants."

Early on Thursday, a government spokesman said, "The government has neither released any Taliban prisoner nor the prime minister gave any approval for any such measure," but later in the day it emerged that Sharif had personally authorized the release of the 19 prisoners, and is considered the release of hundreds more. Sharif kept the release secret from the public because of massive pressure from the military establishment, who oppose the release of TTP prisoners because of their alleged involvement in terror attacks across the country.

The Generational Dynamics principles that I discussed above with respect to the Mideast "peace talks" also apply here. It's generations of people, not the politicians, that decide great events, and Sharif's confused flip-flops illustrate the problem. Many in the public support, or at least passively support, the TTP, even when they conduct a terrorist attack in someone else's back yard, and choose to believe that the United States involvement in Afghanistan is the reason for the terrorist attacks. They're hopin' and prayin' that when the U.S. withdraws later this year, then the attacks will stop. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this cannot happen. Pakistan and India are headed for a massive war, re-fighting one of the worst wars of the century, the genocidal war between Hindus and Muslims that followed the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinent into the nations of Pakistan and India. Daily Times (Pakistan)

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Apr-14 World View -- Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (4-Apr-2014) Permanent Link
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Chicago has coldest winter on record

Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks'

Pakistan government flip-flops and frees 19 Taliban militants from jail

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 4-Apr-2014
4-Apr-14 World View -- Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing 'peace talks'