Some Brief Remarks on "Peace"

As I said at AVI's place, I tend to think that this "peace deal" is just an attempt to push the matter off until after the midterms, and that it doesn't really matter what it says because neither side intends to keep the promises being made. It is probably to our national dishonor that we are led by a man whose word doesn't mean anything, but we all know that it doesn't, so why worry about it? The horse is out of the barn; it'll come back or not in God's good time. For now, it's out of our control -- it's not like the other side has honorable men or women to offer as an alternative. 

The one thing that should die with this peace, however, is the idea that Israel in some way runs the USG. My Israeli contacts are livid. They feel completely betrayed which, in fairness, is what the United States generally does to its allies. That's how you know you're a US Ally in good standing: you get betrayed by this government or the next one, usually sequentially. That also is probably to our national dishonor, but it is at least a demonstration of some kind of self-governance: we can't have permanent promises because we actually do change at least the top dressing of the government once in a while. The unwashed underwear, by which I mean the bureaucracy, tends to go unchanged decade after decade; but some top-level policies get reversed as the pendulum swings.