You can't make a deal with the Dead

[0007]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1038892,00.html

Kevin Toolis
Wednesday September 10, 2003
The Guardian

For a walking dead man, Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab was
unimpressed by the assassins who would one day come for
him. "I am not afraid," he said as we sat drinking tea in his Gaza
City home. "If the Israelis want to kill me, they will. We live in
war, but the Palestinians are tough enough to confront the huge
power facing them. We are not afraid to die."

More.......

In the coming months, the same worthless mortal calculus will
be enacted again among the innocent in the Middle East; on
buses in Jerusalem and on Palestinian streets. The blood will
never stop until it is accepted that there can be no military
solution to the conflict.

A worthy read

[Martin Eden]

1. No military solution

Kevin Toolis makes some good points here:

<snip>
You cannot negotiate with dead men. MI6 and, eventually, the British government recognised that a political struggle requires a political solution. However brutal the IRA's day-to-day terrorism, a strong, coherent republican leadership was in the strategic interest of the British state.

That fundamental insight still appears to be lacking in the Middle East conflict. If a peace process is serious, each side must accept the other as they find it rather than remould their enemies into a more compliant state by assassination and political diktat.

Is Israel a safer place now that Ismail Abu Shanab is dead? Is Hamas now more likely to accept the Israeli point of view? Does Sharon think there are no other Palestinian leaders to replace him?
<end of snip>

Nevertheless, I think Toolis may be missing the point. He assumes that Sharon is seeking a solution, when in fact the only result acceptable to Sharon is a greater Israel that encompasses all of the promised land. Honest negotiations are impossible when your ultimate objective is the complete disposession of your negotiating partner.

This is not to say that many Palestinian militants don't have the same intent towards the state of Israel. My point is that negotiations and "road maps" have much less chance of success than accommodations reached between the IRA and British government.