Ghost of a flea

The perverse nature of the “peace process” is driven by the unstable strategic environment of the Middle East. The existence of fundamentally undemocratic and aggressive states like Syria and Iran, coupled with the multiplicity of nonstate terrorist actors like Hezbollah and Hamas, is incompatible with the survival of a state like Israel, which for historical reasons is paranoid about its existence. It’s a puzzle in which the pieces won’t fit until they are machined down to slot in. No lines drawn on a map, no handshakes on the White House lawn, no pious statements of goodwill alters the key fact that something has to be the grinder and some parts have to be ground down. To speak of the Palestinian-Israeli process is to look through the wrong end of the telescope. Just as one cannot understand Lebanon without understanding Syria and Iran — and indeed the entire Sunni-Shia schism and its attendant politics — so too is it impossible separate the “Palestinian” problem from its context.

It’s not the settlements that are the problem, it’s the region.