http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3470495,00.html i side with Barak on this issue for several reasons: 1) Rudy Giuliani put it best: he essentially said that just because you declare statehood does not mean you have a state. good governance comes before statehood. that is not a restriction that Israel or America put on the Palestinians. it is essentially a self-restriction. they have to build functioning institutions first. those institutions don't exist. any photo ops or handshakes with Abbas are not going to change the cold ,hard and sad fact. bottom line: any agreement, at this time, won't be enforced by the Palestinians despite the Fatah leadership's genuine goodwill. 2) the Army knows better than the government because the government is farther from the action. just like in corporations the upper management doesn't know what's really going on as good as frontline workers. every extra level that reports have to go through is an extra iteration of Broken Telephone. the IDF has historically been more pro-peace than the government echelons because they know the Arab street better. i've read interviews from past decades with former members of elite commando units and they all have consistently said that the Arab Street wants peace. maybe the army doesn't see "the full picture" like the politicians do, but i still have more faith in them. that is because they are tacticians, while the government is more ideological. i hate ideologues (even if my ideology is similar to theirs) because all they do is talk, and mostly in absolutes. tacticians are the ones who make things happen and think more operationally, flexibly, and realistically. 3) peace with the Palestinians cannot be implemented with out Syria's cooperation. the fact that they're arming Hizballah, support Iran and want the Golan is problematic. but the real pain is them allowing all kinds of Palestinian terrorist groups to operate from their territory. those groups don't have many friends left in the Muslim world. with Syria kicking them out, the Palestinian terror infrastructure will be dealt a crippling blow. having nowhere to go (except maybe Iran) will weaken Hamas et. al., and will require less IDF interference with Palestinians' lives. that will give the Palestinians a chance to sort their shit out (see point #1) and will begin a process of creating the right conditions to create a Palestinian state. less IDF interference = more goodwill from the Arab Street in other Arab countries, which will create a positive atmosphere to sign all kinds of comprehensive peace agreements. so in my opinion, the upcoming Annapolis peace conference will solve nothing, and the whole peace-with-Palestinians track should be put on hold until some sort of agreement with Syria is signed first.
