The Rise of the Fantasists

Rick Richman (pictured at right) at Jewish Current Issues has published a number of excellent posts recently on the renewed push by the George W. Bush Administration and the Ehud Olmert government in Israel for negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, for a comprehensive Middle East Peace Agreement. This act of desperation by an unpopular U.S. Administration, an even less popular Israeli government, and a Fatah leader who has just lost Gaza to Hamas, and retains only a tenuous hold in the so-called "West Bank," somehow purports to find hope in a record of spectacular failures. Rick notes how these efforts remind one of Einstein's definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” as well as Santayana's definition of fanaticsim, "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.” Read Rick's posts here, here and here.

Rick links to an article by Evelyn Gordon, entitled "Surreal Diplomacy," which appeared in The Jerusalem Post. Ms. Gordon wrote:

This process has included five signed agreements in which Palestinians pledged to halt terror, Israeli withdrawals from all of Gaza and parts of the West Bank, the complete dismantling of 25 settlements and Israel's offer of Palestinian statehood on about 95 percent of the territories, including east Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Yet not only has none of this dampened Palestinian enthusiasm for killing Jews; it has stoked it.
For Israelis, every stage of the "peace process" has produced less actual peace. In the two and a half years following the 1993 Oslo Accord, Palestinians killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding decade. In the four years following Ehud Barak's statehood offer at Camp David in 2000, Palestinians killed more Israelis than during the preceding 53 years. In 2006, the first full year following the August 2005 disengagement, the number of rockets launched from Gaza at pre-1967 Israel more than tripled compared to 2004 (the last full year pre-disengagement.

Yet the "Peace Process" continues to have its vocal advocates. In the current edition of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Editor-In-Chief Rob Eshman, undeterred by the disasters that resulted from the "Peace Process" efforts he has enthusiastically supported in the past, including the Oslo Accords and the withdrawal from Gaza, doubles down. Using words he has never before uttered in his life, "Help Bush," he acknowledges the failures of the past even while calling for one more effort. The difference, in Eshman's view, is Iran. He believes that fear of the Tehran Shiite Islamic Iranian regime, and its aggressive efforts in support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, Shiite opponents of the U.S. in Iraq and Hamas in Gaza, will somehow not only drive the U.S., Israel, Fatah, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia into one another's arms, but will convince the Arab parties to this anti-Iranian coalition to permanently accept the existence of Israel, as a Jewish State, behind secure and recognized borders.

Yes, Rob, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," is an Arabic saying, but the corollary is that "once my enemy his defeated, my friend goes back to being my enemy." Moreover, Israeli military intelligence, and even the Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, have warned that territorial concessions on the West Bank will bring all of Israel's major cities and the Lod International Airport within rocket and artillery range of Palestinian terrorist militias. Israel's densely populated urban heartland would become the next Sederot, the target of daily attacks, and, unlike many of the rockets fired at Sederot, the rockets are unlikely to fall on empty desert.

What explains the "Peace Process Fanatics," as Rick Richman calls them? Caroline Glick attempts to explain the phenomenon, or at least describe it, in her column in the Jerusalem Post entitled, "The Rise of the Fantasists." Unfortunately, as Glick observes, these fantasies of peace are a world-wide trend that endangers the security of the West.