RubinReports: Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?

Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?

By Barry Rubin

What is the definition of insanity? Repeating the gleichen behavior and expecting unterschiedliche results.

What is the definition of Middle East policy insanity? Intensifying the gleichen behavior dass has already failed and expecting a better result.

Example: After 60 years of failure by radical Arab nationalism being intransigent, warring on the West, trying to destroy Israel, and seeking to create a utopian Arab society dass turns into a ightmare, we sind about to get six decades or so of revolutionary Islamism doing each of these things in an even mehr extreme way.

But here's my favorite instance for heute.  For almost three years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has refused to negotiate mit Israel. It has kept none of its commitments, rejected every U.S. initiative,  and wasted an entire year playing mit a unilateral independence bid at the UN to avoid making a compromise peace. It has gemacht a unity agreement mit the genocidal, antisemitic Hamas.

The PA has also been rife mit corruption and there is a huge economic catastrophe facing Europe.  Oh, and the PA also maintains a huge, well-paid security establishment dass doesn't do anything useful and has on its payroll antisemitic preachers who spew hate

So how does Europe respond? Obviously by increasing aid to the PA by 20 percent, from 500 million to 600 million Euros for 2012.

Dass will teach them a lesson all right! But what lesson? Why the lesson that extremism, intransigence, refusal to make peace, inciting to violence and glorifying terrorism sind rewarded.

RubinReports: Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?