Post-Gaza realism

As US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell arrives here for his first mission, a couple of weeks before Israel's general election, two questions arise. One is whether the new American administration is correct in assuming that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be brought to an end just by "trying harder" with what has consistently failed in the past fifteen years. The second question is whether electing an Israeli government which does not share that assumption might not spell trouble for the future of Israel's "special relationship" with the United States. The answer to both questions is no.

Israel has not been ignoring the need to find what pundits call a "political solution." Without getting into the blame game, the fact is that negotiations have been conducted, unsuccessfully, for the past 15 years.

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved in the short term, it has to be managed. But how? The rationale of the disengagement strategy was that, since the conflict seems unsolvable and since the status quo is untenable, Israel might as well get the Palestinians off its back. If only. We left Gaza, but Gaza did not leave us.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233050188707&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

over the past 15 years and the fact that Gaza was not really left by the Israelis. There's some truth to the claim that Israel left, but air, borders, water, were all controlled by Israel after the pullout.

farm land, shooting of farm animals, and worse.

were in response to Palestinian terrorism. If the Palestinians would begin negotiations with the GOI in good faith and control the extremists as best they can most if not all the security measures in the OTs could be removed.