Anti-Climacus

THOUGHTS ON PIPES: Daniel Pipes came to speak at Duke tonight under the auspices of the Duke Conservative Union, and partly as a response to the coming PSM conference this weekend. It should surprise no one familiar with my views on Israel (peruse the blog archives particularly in spring and summer of 2002, when I was writing about this a lot more) that I agreed with the general upshot of what Pipes had to say; particularly, I think the following sentiment is true:

"The conflict will be over when Jews in Hebron need no more security than Palestinians in Nazareth"

...which seems to me to be a pretty moderate sentiment. A couple of other notes:

*Pipes hinted, though he didn't quite phrase it this way, that part of the problem for Israelis is a disconnect between what the Palestinians once promised to be willing to do, and what they've subsequently done. You can actually probably broaden this out in theoretical/IR terms: what happens (empirically, or should happen normatively) when two sides engaged in a conflict temporarily cease hostilities on the premises of some promised concessions, and then one side backs out on the deal? What's the appropriate level of response? What does this do to possibilities for future negotiations?

*Pipes said what was really needed was not any of the various strategies for ending the conflict, but for there to be a change of heart on the Palestinian side. He put forward an argument that's probably not prima facie ridiculous and said that what makes defeat in wars really stick is the willingness of one side to give up its goals (thus WWI does not really end, thus WWII; thus North Korea could erupt any day into war; thus we no longer worry about the moral threat represented by South Africa). I think it's probably more interesting to take this argument from the other side: are there instances of negotiated settlements which were not also accompanied by one side being willing to give up that have lasted (Korea strikes me as potentially the only example)?

*One issue on which I strenuously disagreed with him was the question of whether new, non-Arafat-approved leadership for the Palestinians might be a sufficient condition for peace. I would suspect that were we ever to see such a person, their very existence would indicate the presence of a public which was agitating against Arafat, and it'd be foolish for Israel not to recognize that as a serious movement in the right direction, one it'd be worth meeting in kind.

*Also, I have a little skepticism about his accounts of leaders v. mass publics, but I don't know enough on that topic to comment at all.