iHaveNet.com
World - Back to 'Normal' in the Middle East | Israel & Palestine
  • HOME
  • WORLD
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Balkans
    • Caucasas
    • Central Asia
    • Eastern Europe
    • Europe
    • Indian Subcontinent
    • Latin America
    • Middle East
    • North Africa
    • Scandinavia
    • Southeast Asia
    • United Kingdom
    • United States
    • Argentina
    • Australia
    • Austria
    • Benelux
    • Brazil
    • Canada
    • China
    • France
    • Germany
    • Greece
    • Hungary
    • India
    • Indonesia
    • Ireland
    • Israel
    • Italy
    • Japan
    • Korea
    • Mexico
    • New Zealand
    • Pakistan
    • Philippines
    • Poland
    • Russia
    • South Africa
    • Spain
    • Taiwan
    • Turkey
    • United States
  • USA
    • ECONOMICS
    • EDUCATION
    • ENVIRONMENT
    • FOREIGN POLICY
    • POLITICS
    • OPINION
    • TRADE
    • Atlanta
    • Baltimore
    • Bay Area
    • Boston
    • Chicago
    • Cleveland
    • DC Area
    • Dallas
    • Denver
    • Detroit
    • Houston
    • Los Angeles
    • Miami
    • New York
    • Philadelphia
    • Phoenix
    • Pittsburgh
    • Portland
    • San Diego
    • Seattle
    • Silicon Valley
    • Saint Louis
    • Tampa
    • Twin Cities
  • BUSINESS
    • FEATURES
    • eBUSINESS
    • HUMAN RESOURCES
    • MANAGEMENT
    • MARKETING
    • ENTREPRENEUR
    • SMALL BUSINESS
    • STOCK MARKETS
    • Agriculture
    • Airline
    • Auto
    • Beverage
    • Biotech
    • Book
    • Broadcast
    • Cable
    • Chemical
    • Clothing
    • Construction
    • Defense
    • Durable
    • Engineering
    • Electronics
    • Firearms
    • Food
    • Gaming
    • Healthcare
    • Hospitality
    • Leisure
    • Logistics
    • Metals
    • Mining
    • Movie
    • Music
    • Newspaper
    • Nondurable
    • Oil & Gas
    • Packaging
    • Pharmaceutic
    • Plastics
    • Real Estate
    • Retail
    • Shipping
    • Sports
    • Steelmaking
    • Textiles
    • Tobacco
    • Transportation
    • Travel
    • Utilities
  • WEALTH
    • CAREERS
    • INVESTING
    • PERSONAL FINANCE
    • REAL ESTATE
    • MARKETS
    • BUSINESS
  • STOCKS
    • ECONOMY
    • EMERGING MARKETS
    • STOCKS
    • FED WATCH
    • TECH STOCKS
    • BIOTECHS
    • COMMODITIES
    • MUTUAL FUNDS / ETFs
    • MERGERS / ACQUISITIONS
    • IPOs
    • 3M (MMM)
    • AT&T (T)
    • AIG (AIG)
    • Alcoa (AA)
    • Altria (MO)
    • American Express (AXP)
    • Apple (AAPL)
    • Bank of America (BAC)
    • Boeing (BA)
    • Caterpillar (CAT)
    • Chevron (CVX)
    • Cisco (CSCO)
    • Citigroup (C)
    • Coca Cola (KO)
    • Dell (DELL)
    • DuPont (DD)
    • Eastman Kodak (EK)
    • ExxonMobil (XOM)
    • FedEx (FDX)
    • General Electric (GE)
    • General Motors (GM)
    • Google (GOOG)
    • Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
    • Home Depot (HD)
    • Honeywell (HON)
    • IBM (IBM)
    • Intel (INTC)
    • Int'l Paper (IP)
    • JP Morgan Chase (JPM)
    • J & J (JNJ)
    • McDonalds (MCD)
    • Merck (MRK)
    • Microsoft (MSFT)
    • P & G (PG)
    • United Tech (UTX)
    • Wal-Mart (WMT)
    • Walt Disney (DIS)
  • TECH
    • ADVANCED
    • FEATURES
    • INTERNET
    • INTERNET FEATURES
    • CYBERCULTURE
    • eCOMMERCE
    • mp3
    • SECURITY
    • GAMES
    • HANDHELD
    • SOFTWARE
    • PERSONAL
    • WIRELESS
  • HEALTH
    • AGING
    • ALTERNATIVE
    • AILMENTS
    • DRUGS
    • FITNESS
    • GENETICS
    • CHILDREN'S
    • MEN'S
    • WOMEN'S
  • LIFESTYLE
    • AUTOS
    • HOBBIES
    • EDUCATION
    • FAMILY
    • FASHION
    • FOOD
    • HOME DECOR
    • RELATIONSHIPS
    • PARENTING
    • PETS
    • TRAVEL
    • WOMEN
  • ENTERTAINMENT
    • BOOKS
    • TELEVISION
    • MUSIC
    • THE ARTS
    • MOVIES
    • CULTURE
  • SPORTS
    • BASEBALL
    • BASKETBALL
    • COLLEGES
    • FOOTBALL
    • GOLF
    • HOCKEY
    • OLYMPICS
    • SOCCER
    • TENNIS
  • Subscribe to RSS Feeds EMAIL ALERT Subscriptions from iHaveNet.com RSS
    • RSS | Politics
    • RSS | Recipes
    • RSS | NFL Football
    • RSS | Movie Reviews
Back to 'Normal' in the Middle East
Joel Brinkley

HOME > WORLD

 

SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Life is returning to normal in Israel and the Palestinian territories, now that the latest round of peace talks is dead.

Militants in Gaza are firing dozens of missiles into Israel once again, forcing Israelis to dive into bomb shelters. Israel is responding with air strikes.

Israelis are building new West Bank settlements at a furious pace -- 2,000 new homes under construction right now and 13,000 more in the pipeline, settlers say.

And lethal violence between Israelis and Palestinians is picking up again. Earlier this month, 36-year-old Jawaher Abu Rahmah collapsed after inhaling tear gas fired by Israelis troops. She had been watching dozens of Palestinians who were taking part in the weekly, peaceful protest against Israel's "security" wall that slices through Bilin, her West Bank village.

She died in the hospital the next morning. Since then, Palestinians have raged at Israel for killing her, while Israel first claimed she wasn't even at the protest and then argued that tear gas could not have killed her.

As always, there's more, much more, in large part because Palestinians and Israelis look at each other across a wide divide -- so wide they can't even see each other any longer.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now calling for direct talks with the Palestinian leaders. But Israeli officials are also saying they want to slow-roll any future negotiations, effectively talking for the sake of talking with no expectation that anything meaningful will be achieved. In fact, a few days ago Israel's hard-right foreign minster, Avigdor Lieberman, pronounced that reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians would take "at least a decade."

Given all of that, Palestinians have a different plan. They want the United Nations to give them a state by declaration. But that cannot work. It's a waste of time.

Right now, the Palestinians are asking the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israel for continuing to build settlements on occupied land. Not one nation anywhere on earth has taken a position in support of Israel's settlements. So winning approval of that resolution should not be hard. Even the United States may be forced to go along, though Washington usually vetoes resolutions criticizing Israel. Palestinians say they wrote the resolution so that it mirrors language President Obama uses.

That resolution is only the start. They also have a grand plan. Despairing of any meaningful agreement with the Israeli government, they want the United Nations to declare a Palestinian state by acclimation. The campaign has already begun.

A few days ago, Chile announced that it was granting full recognition to the state of Palestine. That was the eighth country to recognize "Palestine" in recent weeks, all of them in Latin America. The others are Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba. Each has a different motivation. Chile has 300,000 Palestinian residents; some other states want better relations with the Arab world. Venezuela wants to poke a stick at Washington.

But if Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, pushes hard, he shouldn't find it difficult to win over scores of additional nations. Palestinians have many sympathizers around the world, most of whom seem to overlook their many transgressions -- missiles, suicide bombs and worse.

As this plan moves forward, though, it's the Palestinians who appear to be overlooking something important. They tried this tactic once before, and it had no useful effect. None whatsoever.

Twenty-three years ago, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization leader, asked the United Nations to proclaim a Palestinian state, just as Abbas is doing now. The U.N. General Assembly, on which every nation sits, voted nearly unanimously to call the West Bank and Gaza "Palestine." Only the United States and Israel voted against the motion. Thirty-six states abstained.

In the following few months, almost 100 states offered official diplomatic recognition. Of course, Israel was not among them. So settlers continued building homes; the army continued manning outposts across the territories. In short, absolutely nothing changed on the ground.

If Abbas goes forward with this, certainly almost every state will vote to condemn settlements. A majority of states will proclaim recognition of a Palestinian state, as eight states already have. (Paraguay and Peru are expected to join the others soon.)

But, once again, settlement will continue at a furious pace. Security checkpoints and army bases across the West Bank will remain in place. Rockets will continue flying from Gaza. Random acts of fatal violence from both sides will remain a feature of everyone's life.

In Israel and the Palestinian territories, normal life will continue.

(Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.)

SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World

Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (The Contemporary Middle East)

Enemies of Intelligence

The End of History and the Last Man

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?

Running Out of Water: The Looming Crisis and Solutions to Conserve Our Most Precious Resource

Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water

Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization

The Great Gamble

At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes

Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century

Dining With al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East

Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy

 

  • Top Global Risks of 2011
  • China and United States Need Overarching Concept for Interaction
  • China's Growing Military Might Poses Many Policy Questions
  • Britain and China: Then and Now
  • How Repressive Regimes Use the Internet to Keep Power
  • Islam's Hijackers and Hijackees
  • WikiLeaks: Diplomacy as Usual
  • Africom: Soft Power Warriors
  • Nigerian Elections: Levelling the Playing Fields
  • Nigerian Elections: Changing of the Old Guard?
  • Sudan: Beyond Southern Sudan
  • Afghanistan: Deadly Addiction
  • The Euro: Until Death Do Us Part
  • Russia: Rewriting History
  • Gulf States Should Take a DIY Approach With Iran
  • Back to 'Normal' in the Middle East
  • America: Uneasy Engagement
  • America: Flying Into Turbulence
  • Obama and Human Rights: Continuity and Change
  • Western Economy on Suicide Watch?
  • South America Enters Middle East Quagmire
  • The Political Power of Social Media
  • West Is Best? Why Civilizations Rise and Fall
  • Exploring the Influence of Culture on Military Doctrine
  • The Good News About Gas
  • Less Than Zero: Bursting the New Disarmament Bubble
  • Why Moscow Says No
  • A Third Way to Palestine - Fayyadism and Its Discontents
  • The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran
  • Plan B in Afghanistan
  • The Fallout of the Global Gun Trade
  • Finish the Job: How the War in Afghanistan Can Be Won
  • Why the Rich Are Getting Richer
  • A Leaner and Meaner Defense
  • Defense Is On The Table
  • The American 21st Century
  • Culture Matters: Real Obstacles to Latin American Development
  • A Wave of Christianophobia
  • Lessons From the Iraq War for Afghanistan
  • Foreign Policy Review Suggests a Losing Effort
  • Iran: Glow, Little Glow Worm, Glow
  • Believe in Violence and Be Saved
  • Colonialism Still at Heart of Africa's Growing Pains
  • The Empty Chair
  • North Korea: The World's Problem Child
  • Save the North Koreans!
  • For Middle East Peace, Israel Must Prepare for Nuclear War
  • Iran Nuclear Talks: A Widening Chasm
  • A Sordid Dance in Afghanistan
  • Holding the Course in Afghanistan
  • As New START Debate Rages, Quiet Nuclear Progress With Russia
  • Argentina Needs to Face Education Debacle
  • A World Full of Fault Lines
  • Facebook, Twitter and the Search for Peace in the Middle East
  • China's Leadership: Fractures Finally Showing
  • China: Uncertain Leap Forward
  • Britain and China: Being Friendly
  • Belarus: Land Between
  • Sudan's Referendum: Prickly Interdependence
  • Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Limits of Being Helpful
  • Iraq Refugees: Seeking Safety
  • Troublesome Partner in Afghanistan
  • NATO Presses on With Futile Effort in Afghanistan
  • Counterfeit Medicines: Health and Harm
  • Food Supply: Lunchtime Blues
  • Cybersecurity and Society: bigsociety.com
  • America's Credibility Deficit
  • Global Warming Conference Faces Meltdown
  • WikiLeaks Disclosures Not Earth Shattering
  • WikiLeaks May End Up Helping America
  • WikiLeaks and The Invisible Government
  • Wikileaks: More Than Just an Embarrassment
  • Wikileaks: Undiplomatic Diplomacy
  • A WikiLeaks Wake-up Call
  • Will WikiLeaks Hobble U.S. Diplomacy?
  • How WikiLeaks Can Make Us Less Free
  • Wikileaks: Small Revelations That May Cause a Big Idea to Take Hold
  • G20 Summit: Hitting Singles in Seoul
  • The Consequences of Fiscal Irresponsibility
  • GDP Now Matters More Than Force: Policy for the Age of Economic Power
  • What Population Growth and Decline Means for the Global Economy
  • Leading Through Civilian Power: Redefining Diplomacy and Development
  • The Future of American Power: Dominance and Decline in Perspective
  • Who Do You Call If You Want to Divide Europe?
  • The Game Changer: Coping With China's Foreign Policy Revolution
  • Why the Retirement Age Is Increasing
  • Religion's Growing Influence in International Politics
  • The Difficulty of Integrating Rising Powers
  • Ban-ki Moon Has United Nations 'Drifting Into Irrelevance'
  • Bachelet Faces Uphill Battle at U.N. Women
  • Murderous Tactics Fueling Terrorist Propaganda
  • Benjamin Netanyahu: A Hawk in the Ointment
  • Diminished Capacity
  • Moscow's Modernization Dilemma: Is Russia Charting a New Foreign Policy?
  • NATO Summit Unlikely to Answer the Most Important Questions
  • Franco-German Call for Change in the EU Meets with Much Opposition
  • A Tenuous Deal in Iraq
  • Conflict or Cooperation? Three Visions Revisited
  • A New Global Player: Brazil's Far-Flung Agenda
  • Pax Ottomana? The Mixed Success of Turkey's New Foreign Policy
  • Rise of the Mezzanine Rulers
  • Globalizing the Energy Revolution
  • Democracy in Cyberspace
  • The Digital Disruption
  • Africa: Agriculture's Final Frontier
  • A Reading List for the Twenty-first Century
  • Latin American Leaders Could Have Learned From South Korea
  • Region Ignoring Venezuela Coup Threats
  • To Fight Corruption, Start Cutting Red Tape
  • New Congress Won't Lead to 'Fortress America'
  • The Shifting Balance of Power
  • Checking China's Territorial Moves
  • Why China Has a Point About Quantitative Easing
  • China's Rate Hike: Winners and Losers
  • Taiwan's Shadow
  • Fools Rush in Where Europe Rushes Out
  • Germany to Muhammad: Go Home
  • Can NATO Nudge Russia Westward?
  • French Demonstrations Tell a Familiar Tale
  • Chavez a Pain for Spain
  • Nestor Kirchner's Death May Mark End of an Era
  • Petraeus Follows Iraq Formula in Afghanistan
  • Heavy Handed Intervention Has Stalled Arab-Israeli Peace Process
  • George Clooney Urges Obama and Media To Focus On Sudan
  • Fighting Hunger in Des Moines
  • Rise in Tourism to Miami May Signal Danger Ahead
  • Peru May Be Next Latin American Success Story
  • Nobel Winner Right About Risks of e-Books
  • Nestor Kirchner's Death May Mark End of an Era
  • Chavez a Pain for Spain
  • Economic Woes Put Brittle Nations on Edge

 

Copyright 2011 JOEL BRINKLEY. Distributed by TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

Recommend

Search Powered By Google

Google Search   

ADVERTISEMENT

Advertisement

Advertisement

ADVERTISEMENT

Job & Career Search

career & job search                    job title, keywords, company, location
  • HOME
  • WORLD
  • USA
  • BUSINESS
  • WEALTH
  • STOCKS
  • TECH
  • HEALTH
  • LIFESTYLE
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • SPORTS

World - Back to 'Normal' in the Middle East | Global Viewpoint

  • Services:
  • RSS Feeds
  • Shopping
  • Email Alerts
  • Site Map
  • Privacy