THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: Saul Singer makes a few good points in his latest column regarding the different standards that Middle East dictators are held to.
As an aside, he also tosses off the following observation:
For their whole lives, Israelis have dreamed of being in a simple, solvable border conflict. The entire peace process - from Resolution 242, to Camp David I, to Oslo and back to Camp David - has been built on the assumption that the conflict is over borders, because if it is not, there is no basis for negotiating peace.
This is the type of blinding-flash-of-the-obvious observation that so much of the coverage of the current conflict is predicated on ignoring. What ability would a Taba accord have had to transform an existential rejection?
UPDATE: Instead of my harping on the differences between a "peace process" and actual piece, see this Anne Applebaum piece instead. She describes a consistent temptation among diplomats to fall victim to "peace process syndrome:"
This is what happens when politicians on one side or another of a sectarian conflict start to confuse the "process" with "peace," and think that because they are engaged in the former, they have achieved the latter. In fact, in a war or a long-running feud like the one in Northern Ireland, peace—real peace, which doesn't contain the seeds of a new war—comes about only when one side or the other has effectively agreed to give up.
It appears that the Palestinians may have believed that the Israelis had given up, a delusion fostered by the pattern of the "peace process" (as described at unconscionable length in last night's post), and the contrary recognition helped bring on the current fighting.