By Dr. Aaron Lerner
January 4, 2008
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The bad news is the Prime Minster Ehud Olmert has managed, by his remarks and responses to event, to paint himself into an incredibly tight and dangerous corner.
The good news is that as a democracy the Jewish State has the ability to opt out of the corner without this leading to anything close to an insurmountable crisis.
By presenting the creation of a Palestinian state as an existential need for Israel, Olmert has stripped himself of the ability to effectively insist on Israel's many vital interests.
And his interlocutors know this.
After all, if a Palestinian state is seen as an existential need for the Olmert team, their security concerns -- and certainly any interests that are beyond the scope of security (e.g. economic, historic/national, etc.) are of secondary importance if addressing them means a stalemate over the Palestinian state.
Olmert's team has also embraced the fantasy that foreign security forces coupled with elegantly drafted verbiage can overcome the fundamental problems that make the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state that even marginally approaches the Bush vision impossible for the foreseeable future.
The reality on the ground both in Gaza (and the Gaza-Sinai border), the West Bank, south Lebanon, etc. certainly provides the evidence to justify a radical change in Israeli policy.
It is a change that a different Israeli head of state, unencumbered by a record of embracing the lies that serve as the foundation of Olmert's program, could effectively advocate and implement.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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