Perhaps the reason we are reading comparatively less about "Israel/Palestine" lately is that there is so much real news, and so much of it is astounding, and hopeful. The media are allergic to good news, and run from it as from holy water. The greatest single piece of good news was presented as if it were a tragedy -- Arafat is gone. As became inmediately evident, he was blocking the only possible way forward to the "two-state solution" that all but the terrorists claim to support.
| I've commented a couple times here that when Fearless Leader moves on to the Great Beyond the fanaticism of the followers tends to do the bursting bubble thing. This phenomenon is a pretty good refutation of the argument that it's the times, not the man, that makes things happen. Fascism was the coming thing in Europe in 1936, and it's nothing now, except where it's wearing a false nose, moustache and turban. |
Abu Mazen -- whom we should really start calling by his real name, Mahmoud Abbas -- quickly emerged as Arafat's successor, without carnage, at least without much, and looks certain to win the January election, with the withdrawal from it of Marwan Barghouti, a more "charismatic" leader who might well have become another Arafat (as Arafat became another Mufti of Jerusalem). Mr. Barghouti is currently rotting in an Israeli jail for several well-earned life terms.
| That doesn't mean Hamas is under control, nor Islamic Jihad. The leaders of both are relatively safe in foreign climes. But Yasser was the driver. If he'd kicked it while Sheikh Yassin yet breathed, maybe things would have been different, but he didn't, so they're not. The Bad Guy bloc has to reconstitute itself. They may be able to do that, but not with the head cheeses leading from a distance. And any Fearless Leaders who do arise stand a chance of being helizapped. |
Mr. Abbas made at least some mark as an appointive prime minister with slight independent powers under the Arafat regime. He was among the soi-disant architects of the Oslo accords, and his reputation as a "moderate" comes from having actually said aloud that the Intifada Arafat launched in 2000 had not proved to be in the interest of the Palestinian people. He bravely and publicly opposed the actions of Arafat's Al Fatah, and protested the "militarization" of the Intifada -- by which he meant, the vast arms smuggling that was turning Palestinian society into a terror camp. He correctly guessed that Israel could not be defeated by any imaginable Palestinian military means; and moreover that the days when the armies of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq would come to the Palestinians' aid were long gone.
| Egypt and Jordan have come to the sensible conclusion that they'll get more politically than militarily, thereby proving themselves brighter than Iraq, where an "intifada" is also not working, and Syria, where the Boy President is stuck between rock and hard place. |
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