Following the road map to hell

From The Washington Post:

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan. 14 -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday adamantly rejected "any temporary or transitional solutions, including a state with temporary borders," throwing cold water on an idea advanced by Israel's foreign minister.

Abbas spoke at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is touring the region this week in what she bills as an effort to listen to ideas to rekindle the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Rice said she wants to "accelerate" a three-stage, U.S.-backed peace plan from 2003 known as the "road map" but has been vague about what she means. "When I say accelerate, we want to look at it and see how fast you can move," she told reporters traveling with her.

In order for a genuine "peace process" to take place there must be a genuine desire for peace on both sides of the conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is short one party desiring peace.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. The Palestinians want "peace" it is just that they define "peace" as that state of affairs which will come about when the body of the last Jew has been kicked into a mass grave.

Peace defined as two parties working out their differences non-violently and living together without armed conflict is something which they have no interest in. However that is what the Israelis wish for and it is what the United States wishes for.

Now if the Israeli and American governments were willing to look at the situation and see it as it is they would simply deal with the fact that they cannot have what they wish for at this time and seek the next best option. However realism is not a characteristic of either the socialist government of Israel or the socialists of Foggy Bottom.

So the civilized Western powers will sit down across the table from medieval savages who regard any truce or cease-fire as nothing more than an opportunity to rearm and reposition themselves for a resumption of armed hostilities and will negotiate an agreement with them. An agreement which the Palestinians will honor only as long as they believe that it furthers their ultimate goal of destroying Israel.

What Israel and the United States must accomplish if we wish for real peace, as we define peace, to exist in the region is to make the Palestinians desire peace. The only way to accomplish that is to cause them to realise first that their goal of destroying Israel is impossible, now and in the future and second that their survival as a people depend upon making peace, true peace, with Israel and the West.

In short they must be defeated, not just in a battle or even a hundred battles, but in the war. They must lose the war and they must internalize their defeat. They must feel themselves defeated and their will to continue the struggle must be broken.

To achieve this state of affairs Israel must make war upon the Palestinians with every resource at their disposal. They must continue the war until the Palestinians have no more will to resist. General Sherman knew that the Union had won the Civil War when the civilians of Tennessee and North Carolina told him to hurry to South Carolina and Georgia and punish the people who started the war.

Just as the German people at the end of WWII thought only of making it to the American or British zones of occupation rather than winding up the Soviet controlled East and you couldn't find one who would admit to being a member of the Nazi Party the Palestinians will come to the point where pictures of Arafat are burned in bonfires and anyone who speaks of making war against the "Zionist Entity" will be beaten to death by his neighbors and family members. That is if the Israelis will stop trying to make peace with people who are not yet ready for peace.