Long-term Goals of the Palestinian Authority

[Brad DeLong]

>I agree with all of your sentiments and most of your facts, Chuck.
>Except on this point, because perhaps the only thing the two sides agree
>on at this point is that they won't divide Jerusalem again.  And
>furthermore it would be impossible now even if they wanted to thanks to
>the way Israel has jigsawed in their settlments.  This was the kernel that
>made Camp David II, for all its shortcomings, so stunning.  If they had
>been able to close the deal, it would have meant, underneath everything
>else, and never to be mentioned in public, that the two states would have
>had a permanently open border in Jerusalem.  Which is to say, an open
>border period.  They would have been one population with two governments.
>Which is a big deal.  And probably the only path to a eventual someday
>true solution.

Which is why the falling-apart is so heartbreaking. Once you 
recognize that you have an open border--one population with two 
governments--all of the other line-drawing and border-drawing et 
cetera et cetera are just fights over jurisdiction and the control of 
resources--and the United States ought to be able and willing to kick 
in enough to sweeten the pot to make each side willing to accept that 
the other controls some of the resources it wants.

So what are they fighting over--other than the right for each of 
their more extreme wings to kill some of the other whenever it 
pleases them...

Brad DeLong