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I used to tend to think of the Israeli government as pretty shrewd operators. However, these days they seem to have maybe screwed up. Arafat effectively surrendered to them and was willing to be their stooge - but they destroyed him. They have done the same thing with the Palestinian Authority. The Brits always played stooges and handed authority over the oppressed to the stooges at some point. Ireland is a classic example. Most recently, the Brits figured out who in the Provos' leadership was up for a deal and fastened on Adams (and McGuiness) and did a deal with them. But the Zionist leaders just don't seem interested in deals and handing over some authority to stooges as the price for maintaining the overall set-up - the method of reworking the set-up by a bit of exclusive inclusiveness as it were. They just seem to want to humiliate *all* the Palestinians, even the most supine people like the Fatah leaders. It's all stick and no carrot, which doesn't seem a very clever and sophisticated way for oppressors to operate. On the other hand, folks like Netanyahu received their political education in the US, whose rulers are less sophisticated operators than the old British and French imperialists were. Since the stick usually worked well for the US imperialists - well, up until Vietnam - perhaps they never really learned the importance of the carrots, and so the Zionists they trained didn't either. I think another element is that the Zionist state is, of necessity, pretty brittle. It's one thing to use carrots when you're British imperialism and your colonies are thousands of miles away, or across a stretch of sea in the Irish case; it's quite another thing to use the carrot when the people you're oppressing are among you and next to you. It seems that the Zionist state, by its very nature, may have little negotiating room, little 'give' in it. https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/is-there-a-two-state-solution-to-israel-palestinian-conflict-2/ A couple of other pieces on Redline folks might be interested in: For a campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/for-a-campaign-of-solidarity-with-the-palestinian-struggle/ NZ interview with Leila Khaled: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/nz-solidarity-activist-interviews-leila-khaled-2010/ Veteran Israeli Marxist Moshe Machover on Does Israel have a future?: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/does-israel-have-a-future/ Veteran British anti-imperialist and working class activist Tony Greenstein on Israel: world's most racist state?: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/israel-worlds-most-racist-state/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
