The debate, if you can call it that, over the Israeli-Arab dispute is stale and has been for decades. A recent headline (UN secretary-general condemns Israeli settlements) and the rubbish spouted by Firaz Osman — "the Zionist entity was created on stolen Palestinian land, yakety-yak" — are reminiscent of Groundhog Day and don’t address the practical issue. "Power abhors a vacuum" has never been more true. The vacuum is being filled by a confident, restless Israel, impatient with its nonexistent negotiating partner. It is a vacuum created by an ineffective Palestinian leadership, which has spent 60 years moaning that what is shouldn’t be, that the Jews are devils who shouldn’t be there and that the whole of the land, including Israel, belongs to them, without ever presenting a bona fide negotiating position. Unless one calls reasonable a proposition demanding that millions of Arabs return to swamp the Israeli electorate and that Israel’s borders again become indefensible as a first s...
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