Middle East Progress

have publicly agreed to a “two-state” solution, but never abandoned their goal of destroying Israel. As long as the Israelis refused to be destroyed, the war between the Palestinians and Israelis would continue.

The only way that war could end would be if external support for the Palestinian struggle dried up, and if the Palestinians themselves became so miserable and pessimistic that they would abandon the ambition of destroying Israel. Once that happened, peace would become possible. But as long as they still retained their ambition to implement a one-state solution (which would be a Palestinian state), then peace was impossible, since the Israelis would never accept their own destruction. So peace in Israel would only come about as a side effect of the larger effort to straighten out that entire region, and conquest of Iraq was the essential step in that process. Trying to solve the Palestinian problem first was futile and pointless.

Meanwhile (via Instapundit) Syrians are calling for political and economic reforms. There’s a feeling that a log jam has been cleared in the Middle East, and things are starting to move again.