THE MIDDLE EAST PIECE BY PIECE PROCESS

People talk of the Bullworth moment, when a politician suddenly blurts out truths rather than what we expect.  Now is the time for our President to go full-bore Bullworth about the so called Middle East Peace Process.  That would be a refreshing improvement from our present farce.  This endless punch and judy show is beneath the dignity of a serious state.

What is this process? Secretary of State Kerry and the usual suspects are going through the motions of "bringing the two sides together" to negotiate a "way forward" to a "final settlement," to the endless question of palestinian statehood.  As I understand it, this consists of our Secretary of State conjuring up Yet again the phoenix of the peace process. For forms sake both sides attend, going through a Kabuki dance of mutually unacceptable communiqué's until the process is held in abeyance yet again, only to resurrected by the next American administration.  You might think that we would have gotten the message by now.  

So why didn't peace break out long ago?  Is the problem a lack of acumen by our ambassadors?  In some cases perhaps.  But in my view the process itself is to blame.  That is, the so called process sets up a venue for an accomplishment that neither side actually wants.  

Over the years Israel has set forth conditions they know no Palestinian movement would ever accept.  Similarly, the Palestinians hold out for conditions, such as the right of return, that are utterly incompatible with Israeli existence as a Jewish state.  So we keep calling these characters together and they keep giving us the same dumb show.  They do this because in our ignorance, we have made it profitable for both sides to go through these motions.

In order to get the Palestinians to the table we open up our national wallet to various peace and stability efforts of the PLO.  The Arab way of understanding this is that we pay them not to fight with our so called allies, the Israelis.  The Palestinian leadership deposits our money in their Swiss bank accounts and then they are ready for another round of the "peace process."  The Israelis do the same thing, playing off Palestinian figures and factions against one another.  Everyone in the intelligence community that I've spoken to believes the Palestinian leadership was bought off long ago.  And why shouldn't they enrich themselves? They know the dream of a Palestinian state evaporated long ago.  It will never happen

On the Israeli side, the need to actually reach an agreement is non-existent.  They control our Congress and know that our largess to them will flow no matter how many settlements they build.  Year after year they chisel away more and more Arab land, confident that we will never hold them to account.  At some point they will absorb enough land and water rights as to make any possible Palestinian state a physical impossibility.  Facts on the grounds as they say.

Why do we keep appearing as the magicians assistant at this disappearing act?  I suspect there are several reasons.  One is to give cover to Israel.  The Israelis can always get a good spin out of our media and it's not hard to portray the Palestinians as pig headed and thuggish.  Of course the same is true of the Israeli's, But they have a lot of political juice here so it's best to play along with their side of this grudge match.  By maintaining the mythical process, we also give cover to the Palestinian grifters who will keep the lid on, for a price.

So if our President was honest he would reassign Kerry to work on improving our relations with Lichtenstein or perhaps Andorra   He would also address the American people, saying,  ladies and gentlemen I've had it.  It's time we admitted that the middle East Peace Process is a mug's game.  I will no longer waste this administrations time and your money trying to get these two nasty factions together.  We now wash our hands of these intractable people.  We will now concentrate our diplomacy with the civilized world.  So let us now turn our faces toward Asia.