The latest diavlog at Bloggingheads.tv is one between David Frum and Amjad Atallah on what United States and International policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be going forward.
Frum approaches the issue largely with a focus on Hamas and desires to remove the group on the grounds that it is a terrorist organization. I found myself siding more with Amjad, who had a much more ecological approach.
I’m not sure if his proposals would gain any traction in the current environment, but I think that it’s important that more of those with an ecological approach shape the policy going into the future. This is a complicated situation where you can’t easily designate a group as worthy of destruction without considering the fact that the group doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
And I think that Amjad is absolutely right to point out that the goal should be a peaceful coexistence between the Israelis and Palestinians and that the fate of Hamas, while perhaps relevant, is a secondary issue. I think that this is a point that’s been lost in much of the discussion of this topic.
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