Nixon in China or Nixon in Cambodia?

Here's an interesting article I came across by Jo-Ann Mort at the Dissent Magazine website:
Nixon in China or Nixon in Cambodia: Bibi’s Choice by Jo-Ann Mort

The disastrous situation emerging from the flotilla mishap highlights Israel’s global isolation and the complete lack of regard of the current Israeli government for diplomacy as a means to an end.

I have no illusions about some of the people from the flotilla, nor about some of their sponsors. They were not all peace-loving human rights activists, though some of them—if not many of them—were. But that is not the point. This is a P.R. disaster for Israel that so easily could have been avoided. Were Israel truly negotiating with the West Bank-based Palestinian government, it would find itself in a different situation with Turkey, not to mention with Europe and with the United States. But the sad truth is that the current Israeli government—under the leadership both of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak—has taken an attitude of shoot first, and talk later.

Just think of the split screen images. Next week, the Palestinian Authority will be sponsoring an economic conference in Bethlehem, with over 2000 participants from around the world (including a U.S. delegation led by State Department top staff from the Mitchell team) to trade ideas and business cards, as part of an ongoing effort to boost an increasingly transparent and growing Palestinian private sector.

Additionally, the PA has just launched a campaign to disengage from Israel’s settlement economy, a smart move if they are to wean themselves off of the dependency that the post-Oslo years created, and also if they are to build their own state. Meanwhile, Israel’s response? Rumors abound about how everyone from the Prime Minister himself to those around him continue to engage in a whispering campaign questioning the honesty of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank economist. His perch in Ramallah is fairly regularly threatened by the Fatah old guard (who actually are not honest), precisely because he is promoting an honest regime. And the current Likud ministers have taken the side of the settlers, attacking and intentionally misrepresenting the parameters of the anti-settlers’ goods campaign to make it appear that the PA is condoning a full-blown boycott of Israel, which they are not. Read more at the Dissent magazine website