Amir Taheri on the Geneva Accord

[Skeptic]

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/748

[Cleon]

Ultimately, the Geneva Accords are a subtle political ploy devoid of any real meaning.

As far as the Accords themselves go, I actually agree (*cough* *hack* *spit*) with Ariel Sharon; they're more or less Oslo II. Palestinians can have a state, sort-of; Israel keeps control of the natural resources, airspace, and they can't have any armed forces; it divides the WB and Gaza into little bantustans; some settlements will be dismantled, but most will stay. The same "fantastic offer" that was offered at Oslo.

But what the GA really are is much simpler; it's a Labor Party political gamble. When elections come around next time, Labor will use Sharon's rejection of the GA as "proof" that he's not interested in stopping the violence. (Which actually isn't all that inaccurate.)

Ultimately, they make for nice propoganda but are completely meaningless.

[Mycroft]

Wow, that site has a number of articles that make interesting reading. I really liked this one:

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/739

Good find, Skeptic!

[Skeptic]

Amir Taheri is, to my mind, the most intelligent political commentator around on the middle east. He knows of what he speaks, and has more knowledge about the middle east, the Arab world, and Islam than all of FOX news and CNN put together (OK, so that's not saying much.)

Clearly, Taheri is more annoyed with stupidity and extremism (of all stripes) than with any particular political position. He is just as skeptical, for example, of paranoid anti-Saudi "researchers" (read his article about how they write their books, for a good laugh: http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/646 ) as he is of the idiot Bush-haters.

I realized, of course, that my positive opinion of him might be colored by the fact that I often agree with him on the israeli-Palestinian issue. To check if that's true, I read his articles on issues that have nothing at all to do with israel or Palestinians: his take on the emerging Afghani constitution (http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/682), or his EXTREMELY interesting recollections of his interview of, of all people, Saddam Hussein (http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/538), to name just a few. In almost all cases, I've found first-rate journalism on his part.

[Skeptic]

But what the GA really are is much simpler; it's a Labor Party political gamble. When elections come around next time, Labor will use Sharon's rejection of the GA as "proof" that he's not interested in stopping the violence.

Of course, that history (including the ill-fated Oslo accord) shows very well that the Geneva agreement, like appeasement in general, is more likely to increase violence than to decrease it.

But the real problem is that this is an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the government. As Eric Hoffer said, the "brains" of the Labor party (so to speak) behind this agreement suffer from the common intellectual delusion that if the world, or the voters, or reality, disagreed with their view, then the world is stupid and wrong, and therefore should not be allowed to interfere with their "vision of the future".

Yuli Tamir, one of the architects of this "agreement", epitomized this attitude by declared to the world in Geneva that the signing of this accord "proves" that "last year's elections [in Israel--Sk.] are completely irrelevant". After all, they were merely the biggest defeat that Labor (and the so-called "peace" camp) had ever suffered; Tamir and his ilk in Labor will not let some irrelevant, temporary reason like THAT stop them from determining public policy for the country.

They will not let the mob determine the course--election of no election.

[Cleon]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Of course, that history (including the ill-fated Oslo accord) shows very well that the Geneva agreement, like appeasement in general, is more likely to increase violence than to decrease it.


Absolutely. Which means that the only end to Israeli violence will be either when the US stops shoveling money into the war machine or the Palestinians finally make life so unpleasant for Israel that they're forced to leave the Occupied Territories.