Krauthammer's latest, essentially defending Sharon's current policy towards the Palestinians, has the bad luck to appear along side the news about terrorists using the Rafah crossing. Let us, however, focus on some of his other points:
The other great watershed has been the maturation of the Palestinian national movement. Arafat was a revolutionary who disdained nation-building. Revolutionaries destroy the old order. His mission was to destroy Israel. Which is why, to the consternation of his Western admirers, in 10 years he built not a single schoolhouse, hospital or road in the territory he controlled. Instead, he built a dozen private militias and a state propaganda machine designed to poison the new generation against Israel. Now that he is gone, the Palestinian cause can begin the demystification from revolution to nation-building.
If there is any evidence in this paragraph that any "maturation" has actually occurred, I must have missed it. Yes, it is a good thing that Arafat died. Has the "propaganda machine" stopped? And the trashing and looting of Gaza's agricultural infrastructure is not what I would call "nation-building." Krauthammer again:
It's not that many Gazans would not like to continue the romance of revolutionary terrorism and jihad. But they no longer have the means. The separation fence makes it almost impossible to launch attacks into Israel. And rockets launched into Israeli towns are met by retaliatory Israeli artillery barrages that make the rocketeers rather unpopular at home.
Krauthammer is correct that the strategy of launching inaccurate short-range rockets from residential areas has drawbacks, but I don't have the sense that the rocket problem has been permanently solved. And Krauthammer doesn't address the whole issue of Palestinians who remain in Israel after the "two-state solution" is implemented. What happens when the inevitable majority pockets of Palestinians start demanding an "end to occupation"? Concessions to Palestinians do give them the means to get on with their lives. At the same time they gain increased opportunities for bigger and better attacks on Israel. So far the evidence is that that the Palestinians will continue to follow the Arafat path.
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