Burnt Orange Report

Ditch the Road Map and make a right turn now

By Jim Dallas

The "situation" in the Middle East is one of the touchiest subjects out there, especially among Democrats. I've sat through several arguments in person between die-hardists of both camps (and even more online flame-wars regarding Arab-Israeli relations).

It's profoundly frustrating to me to listen through these, since they usually (a) turn into childish contests of who is to blame in the Middle East, and (b) because such discussions not only comply with Godwin's Law, they usually tend to exceed specifications.

(If you must sit through an argument over Palestine, I highly suggest getting heavily liquored-up first).

I think that my sense of exasperation is (probably) becoming increasingly common in middle America.

So it's always good to see people try to appease everybody, even if they usually end up getting what they deserves.

In any case, the latest entry in the annals of the "kiss and make-up" school of Middle East diplomacy comes in Tuesday's Washington Post.

Rabbi Michael Lerner and Princeton professor Cornel West (lately of Matrix: Revolutions fame) propose a simple quid pro quo that actually makes sense -- Israeli withdraw from the Occupied Territories in exchange for a mutual defense agreement with the United State:

Israel's best interests lie with a United States that would support U.N. intervention to stop the killings, protect each side from the other and provide a U.N. protectorate for Palestine while it became organized as an economically and politically viable state, and while it set in motion steps to repress all those criminals whose ideological commitments might lead them to terrorist acts even after a state had been created. The United States should be promoting an agenda that is explicitly even-handed, balanced and both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. It would call for an end to the occupation, return of Israel to the pre-1967 borders and compensation for Palestinian refugees, who should be resettled in the new Palestinian state. There should also be a guarantee (perhaps through a mutual defense pact with the United States) of Israeli security. Such an agreement was signed last month between former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin and leading figures in the Palestinian Fatah organization; it remains only for Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Authority to sign on.

I'll one up Rabbi Lerner and Professor West and propose the unthinkable -- that if Israel dismantles its settlements and withdraws behind its 1967 borders, the US should not only agree to a formal military alliance, but it should seriously propose Israeli accession to NATO.

Why? Because a major Israeli compromise would probably make such an agreement palatable (or at least imaginable) to Europeans, and if we can make Israel's defense everybody's business (as opposed us and Israel versus everybody, as it stands now), then we will have improved our security situation and sent a very strong message to Al-Qaeda-type groups and anti-semites everywhere -- that they will find no quarter in the West.

So, I've pressed the hotbutton. Discuss.