"We Should Just Talk to Them"

I figured after those last two entries, I’d write something a bit more “right-winged” before my friends thought that I’ve gone to the Loony Left, in spite of the fact that my arguments were grounded in right-winged libertarian thought.
A friend of mine recently told me that we should have a shift in Middle Eastern policy. The two things he noted is that we should try to reach out to the Arabs to get them to understand where we’re coming from. My friend opined that we haven’t been emphasizing that part of the policy, and as such, should find a more diplomatic solution to the problem. He also stated that it’s OK to be a little tough with Israel because we have normalized, stable relations with Israel. Where does one begin?

I’ll tackle the first issue, which is that Obama is not, by any means, stabilizing relations with Israel. If anything, he is causing the demise of American-Israeli relations. The most recent poll out of Israel states that only 4% of Israelis think Obama is pro-Israel…..4%! For those of you don’t know, Israelis are not people who agree on anything. The fact that Israelis have a virtually unanimous opinion of Obama, which happens to be negative, ostracizes Israel, and will probably end up causing an ultra-nationalist fervor in Israel, which would exacerbate the situation.
The second presumption is that by talking to them, we will work things out. Two things I would like to point out about that:
1) We’ve been talking to them in hopes of creating a “two-state solution” since the British Mandate. Israel has tried in the 1937 Peel Commission, 1947 UN Partition, giving land after the Six-Day War, the Oslo Peace Accords, the Camp David peace talks before the USS Cole was blown up, and more recently, the Annapolis Conference.

2) Why doesn’t talking work? Because Arabs are the main obstacle to peace. The reason why it’s so one-sided is because Arabs, not even the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas, recognizes Israel’s right to exist. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated that “you don’t make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies.” He only got it half-right. You make peace with your former enemies. If Palestine would only recognize the existence of a Jewish state, the goal of peace would be much more obtainable.