Boot v. Peres on Arab Peace Initiative
Here’s Max Boot, hawkish pundit deems the Arab Peace Initiative “laughable” and says “That this is not actually a solution to the Israeli-Arab dispute should be obvious to anyone with even a modicum of understanding of the region.”
By contrast, President of Israel Shimon Peres says it’s “a serious opening for real progress.”
That’s via Matt Duss, who wonders where Boot got the idea that Peres doesn’t have “even a modicum” of understanding of the region. Clearly, the Peace Initiative is not the last word on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s one thing to say there should be a just resolution of the refugee issue and another thing to actually work out a resolution that’s acceptable to Israel. And there are various modifications to the cease-fire line that one could imagine being mutually agreed to. But this is what you need to actually hold negotiations for. The Arab Initiative is a serious proposal that offers Israel serious upside—normalized diplomatic relations with the entire Arab League—and it’s worth exploring.
33 Responses to “Boot v. Peres on Arab Peace Initiative”
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January 26th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
The fact that Peres says it doesn’t mean he believes it. Politicians have to be diplomatic, and pissing off Obama by spouting neocon gibberish is probably not a good idea.
January 26th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Well, it is much more fun for American pundits to talk about smashing the Palestinian will, and teaching those civilians a lesson, and, more importantly, people like this don’t want any final settlement; they want more and more of the valuable West Bank areas taken by the Israeli settlers and their establishment enablers and protectors, and they want more and more violence meted out to Palestinian civilians.
The U.S.-Israeli militarist nexus wants this conflict to go on, some who want to wait until their fantasies come true of some complete Palestinian collapse or until they leave, or others who like the continued chance to occasionally blow up some Arab villages and rail against Islamic extremists in a form purer than they feel they get by U.S. military action.
They don’t care at all what’s in the best interests of U.S. civilians, Israeli civilians, Palestinian civilians, or Saudi or Jordanian or Egyptian or Syrian or Lebanese civilians or anyone else.
January 26th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Boot’s views were obviously formed by watching Errol Flynn and David Niven movies………. or reading Peanuts about Snoopy and Fort Zinderneuf.
January 26th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Can Das Boot take some kind of quiz, in public, to show that he has “even a modicum of understanding of the region”?
January 26th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
With the current Israeli government and any other government that might be formed in the near future, peace is not on the table. Let’s cut off their $3 billion in military aid until and unless they stop misbehaving.
January 26th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Boot is a paid tool and you shouldn’t expect much from a paid tool.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Obviously the Arab Peace Plan is a nonstarter.
It doesn’t even account for Arab Spring.
Please, Max Boot, tell us more about politics in Southwest Asia.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“and don’t molest children,”
Who says they aren’t molesting children? You can keep that stuff quiet for decades, as the Catholic Church has proven so well. One thing is for sure, you can sexually harass your coworkers, as Bill O’Reilly demonstrates.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
why do people take this fascist seriously? shouldn’t the phrase “…even a modicum of understanding of the region” count Boot out of the discussion right from the start? just being verbose does not equal being knowledgeable or having useful knowledge.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Because of his awesome Joe Biden cufflinks.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I would not entirely agree with Mr. Boot relative to the so-called Saudi Peace Plan (which is really the Tom Friedman Peace Plan). There are two serious flaws in it.
1. It calls for a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem which is Arab speak for resettle them in Israel.
2. It is take it or leave it and is not subject to negotiations.
Until such time as the Arab world faces reality and definitively states that the refugees will not be settled in Israel, this plan will go nowhere. In fact, until this occurs, Mr. Mitchells’ efforts will be equally unrewarding.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“It calls for a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem which is Arab speak for resettle them in Israel.”
Actually, the Arab plan allows for compensation in lieu of resettlement. But that’s not acceptable to Israel, either. Nothing short of the removal of all Palestinians from the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem would be acceptable to Israel. And when Israel gets that, then they’ll take over Gaza again. Along with additional parts of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. Let’s face it, if it’s even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, it will become part of Israel. Eventually, they’ll take all of Egypt, Iraq, and Iran as well. They are an imperial power that believes the Will of God is on their side. They will only be stopped when we stop them. And we won’t do that until they try to annex New York.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
God, SLC, will you stop repeating the same phrases over and over? Please? I won’t be at all surprised when we discover that the original SLC is long-dead, having left behind an automated protocol to randomly assemble phrases like “Arab speak,” “President Osama,” “put the state of Israel out of business,” etc., and post them here.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
One problem with the Abdullah peace initiative seems to be that Israel already is, de facto, at peace with Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries. Turki al-Faisal’s threats of jihad notwithstanding, I doubt Israelis lay awake at night worrying about waves of Saudi jihadis infiltrating Israel’s borders. What the Israelis probably do worry about are rocket attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah, and the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Since the Abdullah initiative doesn’t include Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, it’s not apparent how it would address those Israeli concerns. It’s true that there would be other benefits to Israel from a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, e.g., trade and tourism. But the two Arab countries with which Israel already has peace treaties, Egypt and Jordan, aren’t major trade partners of Israel, according to the CIA World Factbook.
It’s also not readily apparent how the Arab states would benefit from a peace treaty with Israel, or, for that matter, from peace between Israel and the Palestinians. As an article in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine (”Revolution, Facebook Style”):
Wouldn’t a peace treaty remove that safety valve?
January 26th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
My favorite Boot quote. This guy is a just a joker, nothing more. In a just world all of these characters would be rounded up, imprisoned, and submitted to “non-torture” for the rest of their lives.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
God, SLC, will you stop repeating the same phrases over and over? Please?
It doesn’t help. He knows he pisses you off and enjoys it. I made a quip when he first appeared about how “Israel basher” is a tell of a moronic propagandist and it seemed like he enjoyed employing the formulation even more after that. It’s his Little Red Book and he’s sticking with it.
I guess you could make a game out of calling this stuff out until you had filled up his cut and paste memory with “Hama rules”, “Israel basher”, etc… but I can’t see it ending well.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Also, you forget SLC’s personal obsession with me.
I expect he’ll now post another paragraph about how I threaten cops but was too cowardly to actually commit “suicide by cop”.
Dave does raise an important point. Although the Arab states would like nothing better to see Israel go away, even in favor of the Palestinians, they’re too busy hanging on to their own power to bother to actually do anything to bring that about.
The amusing thing is that it would be so easy. The Arabs have literally billions in cash laying around they don’t know what to spend on. They could hire tons of Western assassins and mercenaries to bring Israel down at any time. They’re just too stupid and greedy to do it. Plus they’re afraid that if it got traced back to them by Israel, then Israel would nuke their oil fields and put them out of business.
But the bottom line has nothing to do with the Arabs. It has to do with Zionist power seekers running Israel. It’s amusing how all the pundits, even Matt, think Hamas fanatics should be sidelined to enable negotiations, but nobody ever suggests that the freaks running Israel should be sidelined for the same reason.
This is why the only solution to the problem lies in the UN reversing its 1947 decision to partition Palestine, dissolving the Israeli government as an illegal, rogue, terrorist state, imposing a UN Protecterate on Palestine, then convening a commission to set up a government in Palestine which covers the entire area and both Jewish and Arab citizens under a secular constitution with allowances for both secular and some Sharia law, with the new state’s borders defined and guaranteed by the international community (to allay Jewish fears about being “driven into the sea”, which was always bullshit in any event, even in 1947 when the Israeli military outnumbered the Arabs and had better equipment.)
This is the only practical solution that doesn’t depend on both Islamic and Zionist fanatics “negotiating” with each other which will never happen.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:16 am
Shorter Richard Steven Hack: The only possible solution is my personal preference which involves a whole lot of measures that no one in the area wants and which can only be instituted by means of never-ending international military occupation (with me in charge).
January 27th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Re Richard Steven Hack
I expect he’ll now post another paragraph about how I threaten cops but was too cowardly to actually commit “suicide by cop”.
Shorter Mr. Hack, I prefer to shoot cops in the back.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Another problem which the commentors here are missing is that the Fatah and Hamas factions appear to hate each other almost as much as they hate Israel. The Egyptian intelligence minister has been attempting for 2 years to get the two factions to pull together and has so far has come up empty. I don’t see how an agreement between the Palestinians and Israel can be achieved in the midst of a civil war between the two Palestinian factions and I fail to see how Mr. Mitchell can be any more successful then the Egyptian intelligence minister has been.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
“(to allay Jewish fears about being “driven into the sea”, which was always bullshit in any event, even in 1947 when the Israeli military outnumbered the Arabs and had better equipment.)”
Please. Israel had, in 1948, maybe 3 military planes — German prop planes from WWII. Israel was invaded by the armies of 7 Arab states, including Jordan’s army, which had been equipped and trained by the British.
Face it — if the Arabs couldn’t defeat Israel in its cradle, when it was in its weakest state (and receiving no aid from the U.S., mind you) — what chance to they have to defeat Israel now?
January 27th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Fred: Put down the comic books.
Here is some real information about the 1948 War. You will be dazzled by how small those 7 Arab armies really were:
“Meanwhile, Arab military forces began their invasion of Israel on May 15. Initially these forces consisted of approximately 8,000 to 10,000 Egyptians, 2,000 to 4,000 Iraqis, 4,000 to 5,000 Transjordanians, 3,000 to 4,000 Syrians, 1,000 to 2,000 Lebanese, and smaller numbers of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni troops, about 25,000 in all. Israeli forces composed of the Haganah, such irregular units as the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and women’s auxiliaries numbered 35,000 or more. By October 14, Arab forces deployed in the war zones had increased to about 55,000, including not more than 5,000 irregulars of Hajj Amin al Husayni’s Palestine Liberation Force.
The Israeli military forces had increased to approximately 100,000. Except for the British-trained Arab Legion of Transjordan, Arab units were largely ill-trained and inexperienced. Israeli forces, usually operating with interior lines of communication, included an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 European World War II veterans.”
See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/israel-inde.htm
It’s doubful that the Zionists were even outnumbered.
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