not really and I quote you

"Once again, Bush's "plans" seem to be thrown together at the last minute. Where's the implementation? How long has it been? And the only thing they've managed to put together is something they could have copied from this forum?"

How do you know they didnt and I would feel a whole lot better if they were coming here for ideas.
The areas not under control by the Israelis are wild west towns at its worse. recently an article by a muckey muck in Jenin reminded me of a article about Virginia City written by Mark Twain in the last century. And like our own wild west there will be a need for home grown fast guns that will kill the bad guys, run the rest out of dodge and keep gun order until an authority can institue vestiges of basic civilization. Outsiders cant do it. It needs to be home grown else the minute you leave all the "slides" come back in.
thanx,
bill

Grass roots as you say. Local enforcement by locals. The problem with this is that it is the very definition of anarchy or warlordism.

There is also the top-down approach where outsiders impose their structure on the people. The problem is, as you've noted, that once said outsiders leave, the locals revert to what they were before the outsiders arrived.

So, either we wait for one man to unite the Palestinians ('Arthur, King of the Britons')
-or-
We settle into a long, sometimes bloody (their blood AND our's) process of bringing up the next generation of Palestinians with OUR (USofA) values.

Either way has problems. If someone unites Palestine, it will probably be as a military force. That is the easiest way. Which does not bode well for the peace process.

We need to CLEARLY state what the Palestinians WILL get WHEN they "prove" they are ready for it. This includes clearly defining the borders.

Then, we need to CLEARLY define the steps that it will take to reach that goal.

Then, we need to CLEARLY define what WE will be willing to provide in terms of training and infrastructure.

Then, we need to realize that this will take YEARS and LIVES to accomplish. Some of our people will be killed by their fanatics. This cannot be done without some of our people being killed.

Humans are adaptable. Enforce the structure for long enough and the populace will forget that there ever was a different way.

If we're not willing to do that, are we willing to drop our interest in their conflict? Not that we could, due to the other Arab states and their oil control. But would we be willing to let them fight it out themselves?

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