A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

I am more than a little perplexed by the comments of Dennis Ross, as reported here (the full review by Ross can be found here). It is one thing to blame Sharon for the ability of Hezbollah to rearm on his watch. It is another thing altogether to attack him for unilateral withdrawals simply because this supposedly removed "any sense of obligation on the Palestinians' part" to contribute to the peace process. Nonsense. The Sharon unilateral withdrawals could have been sold as ex post facto confidence building gestures that demanded a commensurate Palestinian response and absent such a response, parties attempting to broker the establishment of peace between the Arabs and Israelis could have put increased international pressure on the Palestinians to respond with positive unilateral gestures of their own. No one claimed in the wake of the recent collapse of the Doha trade rounds that unilateral efforts on the part of the United States to remove tariffs would lead to a reduced "sense of obligation" on the part of other parties to contribute to the development and enhancement of free trade. Why is this specious argument being made here?

Additionally, I am sorry if Mahmoud Abbas did not get credit for the unilateral withdrawals while getting blame for economic problems afterwards. But as Ross himself pointed out in his book, one of the defining characteristics of Yasser Arafat was the fact that he would rather play the victim in the eyes of the international community than take the chances necessary to establish a just and lasting peace between the Arabs and Israelis. Maybe there are some other people on the Palestinian side who share in that personal shortcoming. There may be people like that on the Israeli side as well, but I have more trouble picking them out of a crowd.