[Peace-discuss] The other occupation

[Morton K.Brussel]

Thanks Carl for posting that salient, if grim, commentary by Chuckman.

I thought that Wasserstein's talk must have been badly swallowed by 
most of the audience that night but was good medicine on the whole for 
them. Although, I don't believe they'll accept it. However, I too 
thought that there was a heavy dose of optimistic unreality to his 
prognosis. Someone should have asked him who would be left to represent 
the Palestinian cause for a renewed two-state solution after the 
destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure by the Sharon government. 
But more fantasy was his view that Sharon was seeing the light, and 
would be willing to free up what little remains of the Palestinian 
lands on the west bank.

The realism of Sharon that Wasserstein posited is the realism of Bush.

MKB


On Apr 20, 2004, at 8:44 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [Last night I listened to a calm, reasoned, and optimistic prognosis 
> for
> the Sharon policy by Bernard Wasserstein of the U. of C. Roughly, his
> argument is that population statistics dictate that Israel must accept 
> a
> two-state solution along the lines of the Taba discussion (of which he
> gave an optimistic reading), and that's what Sharon is moving to.  
> There
> were odd things about the discussion -- notably, the United Sates' 
> being
> mentioned only as a rather benign onlooker; no mention of oil, Iraq, 
> Iran,
> etc. -- and as I came away I fell into a fantasy (probably because I 
> went
> on to a discussion of the Frankfort School) that it was the autumn of 
> 1938
> instead the spring of 2004 and I had just heard a learned German 
> professor
> give an account of how his government had no further territorial 
> demands
> in Europe, now that the question of territory and nationality had been
> adequately adjusted by the leading governments in conference at Munich.
> So, to bring myself back to reality, I read what our friend Jeff St. 
> Clair
> posted on counterpunch.org yesterday, below.  --CGE]
>
> 	The Sharon Annex
> 	Evil Does Often Triumph
> 	By JOHN CHUCKMAN
>
> It did appear that that mountainous bulk of murder and corruption, 
> Ariel
> Sharon, was about to leave politics. Much as with Al Capone, 
> authorities
> only caught up with him through a trail of crooked money.
>
> But we have heard less of his retirement lately and rather more about 
> his
> plan to leave Gaza. Apparently, after killing hundreds of its 
> occupants,
> including scores of innocent bystanders as Israeli helicopters fired
> missiles into city streets, Sharon thinks he'll get some good press 
> about
> leaving Gaza.
>
Etc.