To Understand Israel,
Visit Pakistan
George Mitchell has returned from an apparently unproductive trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Having decided that a Palestinian state must emerge between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, the administration is irritated with Israel because the Netanyahu government insists on knowing what sort of state it would be and demanding that it first recognize Israeli sovereignty.
A modest suggestion to Sen. Mitchell: visit Pakistan's Swat Valley if you can.
See what happens what a government cedes control of territory to a trans-national radical group in hopes of limiting the damage it will do in the rest of the country. Over the weekend, Sufi Mohammad told cheering crowds in Swat that the official imprimatur on the sharia agreement will pave the way for sharia across the country. He was echoed in the capital by Maulana Abdul Aziz, recently released from prison by the government in attempt to placate his followers. Maulana urged those followers to launch a national crusade for sharia, creating at least a theoretical alliance from the Taliban-dominated Swat Valley to Islamabad.
A Pakistani professor said, "The government made a big mistake to give these guys legal cover for their agenda. Now they are going to be battle-ready to struggle for the soul of Pakistan." "The people were desperate for peace," said Jafar Shah, a secular Pakistani legislator who introduced the sharia legislation for Swat. "We really had no other choice. We had no power to crush the militants," he said in The Washington Post.
If he can't get to Swat, perhaps Sen. Mitchell could meet with Amb. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (now referred to as AfPak). Holbrooke told CNN that the decision of the insurgents to keep fighting despite a "peace agreement" was a "wake up call to everybody in Pakistan that you can't deal with these people by giving away territory as they creep closer and closer to the populated centers of the Punjab and Islamabad."
"These people"? Who are "these people"? Taliban, of course, and their Pakistani radical internationalist jihadi allies. But the same applies to any and every terrorist group that demands legitimacy in order to further its radical, violent aims. Hezbollah shot its way into the cabinet of the democratically elected, pro-Western Lebanese government. The United States blessed the gunshot wedding and continues to arm and train the Lebanese Armed Forces, pretending that having Hezbollah in the government won't affect the Army and its decisions. A Hamas/Fatah "unity government" - much desired by the Obama Administration - would have the effect of legitimizing the Hamas ideology inside the Fatah government, but only for as long as it takes for Hamas to overwhelm Fatah in the West Bank as it did in Gaza.
By the way, it doesn't only apply to radical Islamists - the FARC Colombian drug cartel was supported by trouble-making Venezuela and Ecuador. The Colombian government's decision to cede territory to the FARC in hopes that it would limit the damage to the rest of the country was a disaster that has only lately been reversed. President Obama's comment that Venezuela's defense budget being only 1/600th the size of ours made it an unlikely threat rang hollow to our erstwhile allies in Bogota.
Israel is right to stand firm on its security parameters. If Sen. Mitchell wants to "advance" the process, he should learn from the very troubling examples of Pakistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and Colombia what happens when people who get tired of holding the line make concessions to terrorists who have no interest in anything but everything.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment