Anothere insightful analysis on the israeli killing of the terrorist leader by steven den beste. - Dallas-Mavs.com Forums

dude1394 · 03-23-2004, 11:24 PM

(On Screen): I see a lot of commentary online now regarding Israel's decision to kill Yassin yesterday. This editorial in The Telegraph is typical in the way that it completely misses the point of the Israeli action.

But, as the Israelis often say to themselves, it is not enough to be right; you have to be clever. There is little that looks clever in yesterday's assassination in Gaza.

It is indeed clever, far more so than Philps realizes. Robert Clayton Dean makes the point that the Palestinians have been using "the peace process" as a way of controlling initiative and tempo in their war against Israel.

A negotiated peace with the Palestinians is not possible now. That has been clear for a long time. There are two reasons why. First, the Palestinians do not negotiate in good faith and are not truly willing to accept anything short of the complete destruction of Israel. Oslo failed because the Palestinians did not fulfil their side of the bargain, and had no intention of doing so.

But even more important than that is the fact that the Palestinians are not united and never have been. There is no actual leader who can negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians who can actually deliver on the promises he makes, even if he was inclined to try.

That's what Israel is about to prove to the world. This is what is really new, and it is extremely clever. That's why Israel is building a wall around the West Bank, and why Israel is going to pull out of Gaza. With Israel gone, the Palestinian areas will erupt in violence as various Palestinian power groups vie with one another for control.

The only thing that could conceivably prevent that would be highly-regarded long-standing Palestinian leaders. If the leaders of various important Palestinian factions are new and relatively unknown, and their grip on power is weak, then not only will different groups contend with one another, but factions within those groups will also contend. And they will contend with guns and bombs, not with words and negotiations.

Once the Palestinians sink into the morass of civil war, inflicting far more casualties on each other than the Israelis ever did, the fiction of the "peace process" will be broken forever, exposed as the manipulative lie it always was. The international focus will cease to be on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and instead on somehow pacifying the Palestinians themselves. And thus the fiction that the conflict can somehow be settled and Palestinian violence ended if only Israel can be pressured to make enough concessions will also be exposed as a lie.

The right mental model for Palestinian factions is the Chicago crime mobs of the Prohibition era. These are not political movements; they are violent gangs. Wretchard has a series of perceptive articles about the situation, but I think he comes to the wrong conclusion:

By striking at so senior a terrorist target, the Jihadis will be in no mood for negotiations. They themselves will cast away the Peace Process and sheer fury will make them forswear their favorite tactic, the faux hudna -- thereby granting Israel a meeting on the battlefield.

Israel doesn't want to meet Hamas on the battlefield. Israel wants Hamas to meet Islamic Jihad and Fatah on the battlefield. A Palestinian civil war is the ideal outcome for Israel. (Or at least, the best outcome that is actually plausible.)

(more on the web site).

"Last paragraph is a goody "

Israel has an even bigger card it can play. After the Wall around the West Bank is completed, and Israel is ready to pull out of that area as well, Israel can – and I believe will – kill Arafat (if he hasn't already died). With him gone, the last remaining vestige of the illusion of a unified "Palestinian leadership" will go to a more-than-deserved grave, and the West Bank too will erupt in violence.

denbeste

EricaLubarsky · 03-23-2004, 11:30 PM

Can't all these Yassin threads be combined? I count at least four.

dude1394 · 03-23-2004, 11:51 PM

If someone combines the 50 happy days threads then maybe.

EricaLubarsky · 03-23-2004, 11:53 PM

I think that was a protest and Im pretty sure you are aware of that.

dude1394 · 03-24-2004, 12:06 AM

Sure I was aware of it. But to be honest I think most of the new threads provide increased or nuanced focus on a certaon point that a big gloom of a thread does not. Having a thread like "politics" is having a thread like "message thread" to me. It's not that interesting. I prefer (just my preference however, if moderators asked me to do something different I would) that a subject have a tile of it's own. The initial assasination thread for example was a newsflash with commentary on just that assasination. Although the denbeste article is also commentary, I felt (again just mho) that it was sufficiently nuanced that increased focus would illicit discussion. Maybe, maybe not. But that's why I prefer threads that have a different slant on them.

Different strokes, I imagine.

EricaLubarsky · 03-24-2004, 12:50 AM

Most of the individual posts that people provide tend to be commentary and opinion which does flesh out the event but also provides a deep bias. I tend to dislike the neo-con side more but Im concerned that the lounge is becoming a war of threads of conflicting opinions where people agree (and live in an echo chamber) or disagree and either feel attacked or attack back with another thread with an opposing bias. Im concerned that this process might happen and I also prefer to just have a happy, jovial place to get away from the downright miserable Mavs season.

madape · 03-24-2004, 10:16 AM

I agree with Erica. It's great that we are capable of such a strong political debate on a basketball board. But the topics that interest a small handfull of posters has begun to dominate the entire lounge. There are many posters who traditionally have frequented the lounge who just aren't interested in participating political/economic/terrorism conversations. Out of consideration for them, I'm going to try to keep my rants centralized to a few choice threads.

But this is a great article. Good find dude1394

Murphy3 · 03-24-2004, 10:59 AM

Please don't combine the threads

MavKikiNYC · 03-24-2004, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by: Murphy3
Please don't combine the threads

All this needs is a pic from Sally Struthers.

Please....won't you save the independent political threads?

dude1394 · 03-24-2004, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by: madape
I agree with Erica. It's great that we are capable of such a strong political debate on a basketball board. But the topics that interest a small handfull of posters has begun to dominate the entire lounge. There are many posters who traditionally have frequented the lounge who just aren't interested in participating political/economic/terrorism conversations. Out of consideration for them, I'm going to try to keep my rants centralized to a few choice threads.

But this is a great article. Good find dude1394

Den beste is awesome.

And PLEASE DON"T limit your rants to a few choice threads... They are awesome everywhere.

Mavdog · 03-24-2004, 12:36 PM

What Beste doesn't seem to get is that the assasination of the Palestinian political leadership can lead to cohesion rather than seperation and his hoped for civil war among the palestinians.

Is it just me or do others find a desire for the death and destruction of the Palestinians as expressed by Beste to be repulsive? After all, to call for that death/destruction/anarchy/violence a civil war would bring and to portray it as positive makes him no better than those in Hamas calling for the same to happen to the Israelis.

On the one hand Beste sees that Palestinians as monolithic ("the Palestinians do not negotiate in good faith and are not truly willing to accept anything short of the complete destruction of Israel"} while then portraying them as seperate groups ("the Palestinians are not united and never have been"). Very contradictory.