Bless Colin Powell for finally stating the obvious:

“If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed – I don’t know that leads us anywhere,” Mr Powell told the congressional hearing.

In the meantime, what’s wrong with this statement?

On Monday Mr. Sharon told a parliamentary committee: “We have to deal [the Palestinians] very painful blows, continuously, until they understand that they won’t achieve anything with terror.”

It took a year, 310 dead Israelis and 1032 dead Palestinians for Sharon’s policy to be plausibly discredited. When Sharon was elected last February, the death toll stood at around 150 total. The Pro-Sharon argument then was that he was going to increase security by hitting the Palestinians harder (all of you, mind you, not just the guilty ones). I said then that was a ludicrous argument, both in terms of causality and morality. What should be obvious to people who watch the region is that the Palestinians see themselves as desperate, and a portion of them are willing to commit suicide to hurt the other side. That makes Palestinian militants even crazier than Israeli hawks, and in a cycle of violence the craziest side always has the upper hand. Meanwhile, Sharon’s motives are progressively being reduced to a naked hatred of Arafat.

Policy criticism should always include an alternative solution. This solution always was, and will remain, a policy of isolating extremists on either side. Moderates on either side have more in common with each other than with their extremist ends. It is in the interests of both the suicide bombers and the Israeli settlers to prevent a coalition of moderates negotiating a peace or even just a truce. But there are options that would frustrate extremists on either side: building a “security perimeter” on the 1967 borders and removing settlers from their provocative settlements; this would satisfy the entire international community, lead to recognition by Arab states, and stifle infiltration by suicide bombers from the West Bank. When it comes to the Golan Heights, it would likely have to become a demilitarized zone, under Syrian sovereignty but holding only UN Peacekeeping troops.

[Wed, Mar 13 2002 – 04:19] uppers (email) right on, stefan!

unfortunately i can’t think of anything sarcastic to write about all that.