When future professors describe the self-made net in which Israeli and American statesmen have been struggling of late, one of their most vivid images should be of the words of Yossi Beilin, published in Ha'aretz's magazine of March 7. The interviewer then asked how Beilin et al could possibly have gone into such a process without understanding the practical problems involved. I am simply not prepared to live in a world where things are unsolvable. That is to say, that for Beilin, as for Woodrow Wilson, as for the Clinton administration, if the world does not conform to one's own views, so much the worse for the world. Alas, solipsism is the negation of statesmanship.
Bigger countries can sometimes afford bigger doses of it than smaller countries.
None can afford much of it for long. Given such blatant disregard for the fundamentals of international statecraft, the wonder is not that Israel is in such trouble, but that its troubles are not bloodier.