Soccer Dad

Why not?

Dov Bear asks rhetorically of today's summit AND WHY COULDN'T THIS HAVE HAPPENED THREE YEARS AGO?
There is an answer to this question.
Yasser Arafat was still breathing.
Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi hadn't yet had their Hellfire retirement parties.
But there's a lot more to go. Abbas has to prove that he's sincere and that he will actually do what he is obligated instead of pleading weakness and otherwise making excuses.
Dov Bear's commenter skeptic makes a number of mistakes. The peace process didn't fail because PM Rabin was assassinated. After Rabin was assassinated the peace process intensified. Israel withdrew in quick succession from Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, Ramallah, Kalkilyah and Bethlehem and Shimon Peres took over the lead in the polls over Binyamin Netanyahu. (Netanyahu passed Rabin in popularity right before Rabin was killed. The assassination was used to smear the Right in Israel and gave Labor a big boost in popularity.)
It was only after the terror of Feb-Mar 1996 that Netanyahu started to become competitive again.
Though that terror was alternatively attributed to the peace process being to successful (Hamas was about to be marginalized and thus had to derail the peace process) or as revenge for killing bomb maker Yihye Ayyash, the real reason was that 3 month earlier Israel had given control of 6 cities to the PA that did nothing to impede the development of a terrorist infrastructure. Thus once Israel lifted the closures in February the terror started.
The conventional wisdom placed too much emphasis on motive and not enough on means or opportunity. That's why the test for this summit will be seen in 3 - 4 months.
And Netanyahu didn't derail the peace process no matter how many times skeptic, Dennis Ross or Jim Hoagland make that claim. If anything he made the peace process palatable again and made the one concession Labor couldn't muster the support to implement - withdraw from 80% of Hebron.

Posted by SoccerDad at February 9, 2005 12:12 AM