Here's another wonderful thought-provoking post, and a pretty darn good discussion, too, over at Treppenwitz.
I was assured that once we were out of Gaza we would be better able to defend ourselves... and that even the smallest provocation from within the newly judenrein Gaza would be dealt with swiftly now that there would be no worry about Israeli settlers being used as proximity hostages against large-scale retaliation. Several people even emailed me quotes from the recently beatified St.Rabin's old campaign speeches in which he called predictions of Palestinian missiles falling on Ashqelon "alarmist fear-mongering on the part of the Likud".
What seems to be lacking these days is a taking stock of lessons learned.
Call it saying 'I told you so'. Call it 'finger pointing'. But if both sides of the political aisle were making bold claims and issuing dire warnings a year ago, it seems to me that at some point an assessment must be made of who's predictions turned out to be correct.
Yes, indeed it must. Those of you who are regulars here are probably getting tired of this refrain. But I intend to keep at it. It's not a dead horse. We can, as David suggests, take stock of lessons learned, or lessons that should have been learned. We can avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
But not until we admit they were mistakes and also understand why they were mistakes. I've come to see this as necessarily a two-step process. Far too many people who ultimately acknowledged that Oslo was a disaster were all too happy to jump on the 'disengagement' bandwagon with both feet. They tried to point to differences that were either far from the heart of the problem or actually exaccerbated it ("yes but this time we're not expecting anything in return"), but in the end it failed for many of the same reasons that Oslo failed, and then some. It is also turning out to have been even more costly in too many ways.
So a frank assessment is not only necessary, but critical. The commenters at Treppenwitz are at least giving it a go. Check it out.
