Obama should pressure Israel to remove some West Bank Settlements

[sqweels]

@brazil84

I’m not sure that you meant to use the word “appease,” but I do agree with what you literally said.

By this I mean that with the Israeli attacks on Gaza as well as in the broader sense the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, any concession to the Palestinians would not be seen as caving in to terrorists and should not be opposed on those grounds.

But now is the time to act, because with the next terrorist attack the window will slam shut.

[sqweels]

@Liberal

That’s all well and good, but in their book one infidel is no different from another.

From a blurb in this weeks’s Time Magazine:

@TIME

Some people call for the city to be placed under third-party supervision

I go along with the idea of a Christian-Jewish-Muslim administration of the city with a close liaison to a professional security force–I guess it would have to be sanctioned by the UN–whose personnel are drawn from outside the region. It shouldn’t exclude anyone on the basis of religion, but they should be thoroughly mixed and well-versed in non-aligned professionalism. You don’t just want ordinary army units temporarily under UN command being rotated thru.

Of course getting the sides to agree is always the hard part. If the Muslims won’t accept any Jerusalem security force containing infidels, then Israel is that less likely to hand it over to anyone.

[aldiboronti]

@Liberal

Why not just let Obama decide about all this. I suspect that his thought processes are more wise and sophisticated than ours.

Suddenly Obama is an expert on the Middle East? When did he gain such profound knowledge? The truth is that he’s no better equipped than previous Presidents (and certainly far less knowledgeable than some of them) to deal with these issues.

[Liberal]

@sqweels

I go along with the idea of a Christian-Jewish-Muslim administration of the city with a close liaison to a professional security force–I guess it would have to be sanctioned by the UN–whose personnel are drawn from outside the region. It shouldn’t exclude anyone on the basis of religion, but they should be thoroughly mixed and well-versed in non-aligned professionalism. You don’t just want ordinary army units temporarily under UN command being rotated thru.

The problem is the source of the violence. It isn’t coming from reasonable moderates. It’s coming from angry ideologues. Pacifying ordinary people is easy. Just provide jobs and economic opportunities. But the fanatics launching the rockets don’t like Christians much, and they like Jews even less. It matters to them if their holy land and relics are desecrated. They will not stop firing their rockets and forming their militias and bombing shopping centers until they get what they want. And they don’t want a consortium of Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

@aldiboronti

Suddenly Obama is an expert on the Middle East? When did he gain such profound knowledge? The truth is that he’s no better equipped than previous Presidents (and certainly far less knowledgeable than some of them) to deal with these issues.

Expertise is not what’s missing. There are more experts in Washington than crackers in Georgia. What’s missing is leadership. We all know the goal. The goal is peace. What we need is a leader who knows how to marshall the experts, put them to work, and inspire them to succeed. I believe Barack Obama is that leader.