# Handicapping the Annapolis Peace Conference **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 28, 2007, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/handicapping-the-annapolis-peace-conference/428011 "2007-11-28T07:22:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/handicapping-the-annapolis-peace-conference/428011/41 "2007-11-29T20:16:52Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Christianity certainly does not need a Pope-of-All-Christendom. Why does Islam need a Caliph-of-All-Islam? [/QUOTE] Strictly speaking it doesn’t need one. What it does need is some unifying ideal (in the positive sense, not the current negative one) to inspire it. That’s most easily and effectively delivered in the form of a man who can inspire and work against fundamentalism. I don’t think it was a total coincidence that the end of Caliphate coincides generally with the rise of fundamentalism. Without a unifying ideal and in the face of increasing despotism, people turned to that which promised them an answer - a return to a “golden age” or the ability to blame all their troubles on foreigners. > [@Magiver](#): > > technology moved forward in the dark ages because a religiously funded higherarch paid for the advances of war. No. First off, the religious heirarchy was not particularly interested in the petty conflicts of chieftains and warlords, who in turn were not initiatally Christian (and many Christians were Arian, not Catholic). The Church was generally uninterested in wars because they killed good Christians with no benefit - and dangerous in the face of Pagan and eventually Islamic aggression. Though it was better to have open wars than simmering permanent skirmishes. Second, the “Dark Ages” saw many innovations in shipbuilding, bridgebuilding, architecture, and agriculture, as well as new themes in literature and forms of music. It was trade and formal education which declined, replacing a conservative, imperial Roman civilization with a younger, more active and flexible Germanic one. The cultures mixed in different degrees in different areas, of course, so that France and Spain were less germanic than, well, Germany, and also England. Third, warfare did not advance terribly much during the Dark Ages. Advances in metallurgy made certain weapon forms more popular, which in turn influenced tactics, but a bigger change was simply the new germanic social order, where powerful lords claimed lands and eventually titles in accordance with their power. As under the original (and long-gone) early Roman and Greek models, only relatively wealthy individuals could afford quality arms and armor, not to mention horses or the time to pratice with their gear. So they became a warrior elite. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2007, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/handicapping-the-annapolis-peace-conference/428011/42 "2007-12-02T22:27:24Z")
[First-week analysis](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071217/carey) from _The Nation:_ > [@](#): > > So why take such a gamble now, given its seeming certainty of failure? From the perspective of the Bush Administration as well as many of the attendees, the purpose is not only to address the Israel-Palestine conflict but to use diplomacy to isolate Iran and radical Sunni Islamists. The Administration encouraged Arab League attendance at Annapolis as a way to forge a regional alliance against the Persian Peril (and also to recoup some of the political capital lost through the Iraq disaster). The White House and Israel also hope that heightened aid to the West Bank PA, releases of Fatah prisoners and progress in talks stemming from Annapolis can be used to turn Palestinians against Hamas. This has been combined with a near-blockade of Gaza–the collective punishment of 1.4 million Palestinians for democratically electing leaders not to Washington’s liking, which has led to staggering levels of poverty and hunger and a growing public health crisis. Aside from these violations of human rights, the Administration seems to have given little thought to the fact that an agreement with one Palestinian faction will invite sabotage from the excluded. One does not have to accept Hamas’s ideology, or that of the clerical regime in Tehran, to recognize that engagement and negotiation are more productive than isolation. > > \ > > Which is a pity, since, despite the myriad obstacles, the path to a two-state solution has never been clearer. As spelled out in documents like the Arab League peace initiative and the 2003 Geneva Accord, Israel would have to pay the difficult price of removing several hundred thousand settlers from the West Bank and the Golan and giving up control of East Jerusalem, but in exchange it would get full diplomatic recognition from not only the new state of Palestine but all the Arab League nations, as well as an end to Syrian motives to foment Hezbollah militancy on Israel’s northern border. The Palestinians would have to pay the difficult price of giving up the right of all refugees to return to Israel, but they would get independent statehood and an end to occupation–a solution Hamas would be compelled to accept. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/handicapping-the-annapolis-peace-conference/428011.md?page=2)