Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: il NYT verso il realismo

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/17iht-edcohen.html?_r=1
A Mideast Truce
By ROGER COHEN
I’ve grown so pessimistic about Israel-Palestine that I find myself 
agreeing with Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman: 
“Anyone who says that within the next few years an agreement can be 
reached ending the conflict simply doesn’t understand the situation and 
spreads delusions.”
That’s the lesson of early Obama. The president tried to rekindle peace 
talks by confronting Israel on settlements, coaxing Palestinians to 
resume negotiations, and reaching out to the Muslim world. The effort 
has failed.
It has alienated Israel, where Obama is unpopular, and brought the 
president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, close to 
resignation. It’s time to think again.
What’s gone wrong? There have been tactical mistakes, including a clumsy 
U.S. wobble toward accepting Israeli “restraint” on settlements rather 
than cessation. But the deeper error was strategic: Obama’s assumption 
that he could resume where Clinton left off in 2000 and pursue the 
land-for-peace idea at the heart of the two-state solution.
This approach ignored the deep scars inflicted in the past decade: the 
killing of 992 Israelis and 3,399 Palestinians between the outbreak of 
the Second Intifada in 2000 and 2006; the Israeli Army’s harsh 
reoccupation of most of the West Bank; Hamas’ violent rise to power in 
Gaza and the accompanying resurgence of annihilationist ideology; the 
spectacular spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and the 
Israeli construction of over 250 miles of a separation barrier that has 
protected Israel from suicide bombers even as it has shattered 
Palestinian lives, grabbed land and become, in the words of Michael 
Sfard, an Israeli lawyer, “an integral part of the West Bank settlement 
plan.”
These are not small developments. They have changed the physical 
appearance of the Middle East. More important, they have transformed the 
psychologies of the protagonists. Israelis have walled themselves off 
from Palestinians. They are less interested than ever in a deal with 
people they hardly see.
As Ron Nachman, the founder of the sprawling Ariel settlement, comments 
in René Backmann’s superb new book, “A Wall in Palestine,” the wave of 
Palestinian suicide attacks before work on the barrier began in mid-2002 
meant that: “Israelis wanted separation. They did not want to be mixed 
with the Arabs. They didn’t even want to see them. This may be seen as 
racist, but that’s how it is.”
And that’s about where we are.
With Palestinians saying, “Not one inch further will we cede.” The 
myriad humiliations of the looping barrier, which divides Palestinians 
from one another as well as from Israel, have cemented this “Nyet.”
On the surface, Obama’s decision to tackle settlements first was logical 
enough. Nothing has riled Palestinians as much as the continued flow of 
Israeli settlers into East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Both Oslo (1993) 
and the Road Map (2003) called for settlements to stop, but the number 
of settlers has risen steadily to over 450,000.
The president was categorical in his Cairo speech: “The United States 
does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”
Nor do I. But facts are hard — and Obama has tried to ignore them. The 
history briefly outlined above makes clear that the right-wing 
government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t deviate from the 
pattern of settlement growth established since 1967.
Indeed, Backmann’s book (from which the Sfard quote is also taken), 
demonstrates a relentless continuity of Israeli purpose, now cemented by 
a fence whose aim was in fact double: to stop terrorists but also “to 
protect the settlements, to give them room to develop.”
That is why, even at 250 miles, the barrier (projected to stretch over 
400 miles) is already much longer than the pre-1967 border or Green 
Line: It burrows into the West Bank to place major settlements on the 
Israeli side, effectively annexing over 12 percent of the land.
The United States condoned the construction of this 
settlement-reinforcing barrier. It cannot be unmade — not for the 
foreseeable future. Peace and walls do not go together. But a truce and 
walls just may. And that, I must reluctantly conclude, is the best that 
can be hoped for.
Obama, who has his Nobel already, should ratchet expectations downward. 
Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. 
That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the 
end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.
It’s not what Abbas wants but he’s powerless. Shlomo Avineri, a 
political scientist, told me, “A nonviolent status quo is far from 
satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad.”
I recall my friend Shlomo dreaming of peace. That’s over. The last 
decade destroyed the last illusions: hence the fence. The courageous 
have departed the Middle East. A peace of the brave must yield to a 
truce of the mediocre — at best.
At least until Intifada-traumatized Israeli psychology shifts. I agree 
with the Israeli author David Grossman when he writes: “We have dozens 
of atomic bombs, tanks and planes. We confront people possessing none of 
these arms. And yet, in our minds, we remain victims. This inability to 
perceive ourselves in relation to others is our principal weakness.”

 By ROGER COHEN
è lo stesso porco antisemita che parlava con toni rosei degli ebrei
iraniani? O qualcuno ha la memoria molto corta?