By Ran Zisovitch @ Shutterstock.com
At Kunstler.com, James Howard Kunstler analyzes the comments of Scott Ritter, who pushed for face-to-face negotiations between Israel and Hamas and gives his explanation as to why Ritter’s proposed process wouldn’t work. Kunstler writes:
Scott Ritter’s proposed initiative goes like this: Call a cease-fire and halt the bombing of Gaza. Israel must commence direct face-to-face negotiations with Hamas — no intermediaries! — for the exchange of hostages and prisoners and to begin groundwork toward a two-state solution, that is, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. For decades, that two state solution has been hung up on two sharp thorns.
One is the practical question of where that Palestinian State would be. The common idea is that it would be the disputed zone called the West Bank (of the Jordan River) plus Gaza. The West Bank was occupied by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, as was the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights on Israel’s northern border with Syria. Israel eventually returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982, and Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005. Gaza has been self-governing since, with internal conflict between its Hamas and Fatah factions. Gaza has been used as a launching site for rocket attacks in Israel ever since, regularly upending attempts to negotiate a lasting peace. Israel, on the other hand, has installed over 600,000 settlers in the West Bank, said to be in violation of international agreements.
The second thorn that hangs up any plausible peace is the Palestinians’ overt declarations in the Hamas charter, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist and must be destroyed. Iran, too, has for years notoriously declared its intention to “wipe Israel off the map.” That is hardly a viable pre-condition for settling this long quarrel. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” goes the chant. Notice that the Islamic nations surrounding Israel refuse to admit any Palestinian settlers. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, will not take them. Why is that? I’ll tell you: because they understand that the bellicose, fractious Palestinians will bring them trouble.
Western Civ, weakened, broke, and mind-fucked, now faces a fast-unifying multi-nation Jihad that looks more and more like World War Three. The pressure is on for Israel to re-think its furious response to the savage attacks of October 7. Yet, the threat to its survival has never been so stark. There is little appetite for the US to get involved, though reports out of the war fog indicate that there might be as many as 5,000 US soldiers already inserted into the Gaza campaign alongside IDF soldiers. We have plenty of reason to worry that US towns and cities could be the next target, since no one really knows how many Jihadis have crossed into our country from Mexico under “Joe Biden’s” wide-open border policy. What a moment to be leaderless!
Read more here.
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