On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
> 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?
Because both sides got terrified at the sudden prospect of giving up half their claims and trusting the other whom they regarded as completely untrustworthy. The politics were so fragile because they jumped so suddenly, so unexpectedly and so far ahead of the consensus on both sides. And this jump came when all the leaders involved were at their weakest, and when the previous solution, Oslo, was hanging by a thread. Which the failure of this new attempt then broke. Unleashing every counterforce that had hitherto been dammed.
An optimist would say that after a few more years of fighting both sides will exhaust themselves again. And then the negotiations will begin again at this point, which is a big step forward from 10 years ago. And that starting from this point, a peace settlement is for the first time conceivable.
But thus far I have not been able to discover any grounds at all for such optimism.
Michael __________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
"I'm an optimist because it's intellectually more challenging" __________________________________________________________________________