I was reading a Post article that pointed out something I hadn’t realized: because Israel is the occupying country, according to international law they are required to provide for the Palestinians. This is another reason they’ve had a vested interest in the success of the Palestinian Authority; if the PA fails to take care of their people, then Israel will be required to do it. It’s an interesting situation (and does a lot to explain Sharon’s take on unilateralism). I think the fact that the interim prime minister recognizes that the creation of a Palestinian state will necessitate a partial pullout from the West Bank makes it more interesting. The strategy is clearly to give the Palestinians enough to make their country their own responsibility, then use the pressure of the electorate to forcibly moderate the government: the “pothole” theory. There’s an interesting article on Slate about the precedents of this approach right now.

The logical counter-argument would be that in Iran, the maintenance of the state didn’t do a lot to moderate that Islamist movement, but I think that Iran is more a testament to how dangerous it is to deny the vote for such a long period of time; I think that putting in the “safe” government of the Shah did a lot more to promote extremism than letting the people vote would have.

I would also point out that the use of apologist as an epithet and declaring the reasoning of your opponent to be “cliche” both represent ad hominems.

Of course, negotiating with the P.L.O. got Israel the Intifada.

Of course, that just resulted in the building of the wall, which dramatically reduced the threat of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Of course…

I wonder how the apologists will spin this one? Oh, that’s right – they won’t. They’ll just launch the cliche ad hominem attacks to divert attention away from the truth.