Is The Peace Process Realistic?

Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies has written an important essay on the viability of the "peace process" for solving the conflict between Israel and the Arab/Muslim world:

Of Braveheart and Bush

Author:	Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies

January 5, 2008
Wall Street Journal

President Bush will travel to the Middle East next week, where he will become the latest U.S. president, going back to the 1940s, to make a major push to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is hard to see what in the current situation—with the Gaza Strip in the hands of a rabidly anti-Israel group and the West Bank in the hands of only a mildly less anti-Israel group—makes him think he will succeed where his predecessors failed.

Those who insist on pursuing the “peace process,” notwithstanding the low probability of success, claim that we have no choice. “What is the alternative?” they ask. “Perpetual war?”

Well, yes.

To be skeptical of the peace process is not to suggest that such never-ending strife is desirable, but merely to acknowledge that it may be inevitable. The contrary view—that even a conflict as intractable as this one should end soon—rests on a sunny, if ahistorical, Enlightenment faith that peace is the natural order of things and war a temporary aberration.

To view the entire article, go to:http://www.cfr.org/publication/15180/of_braveheart_and_bush.html.