WALK ON BY :

Palestinian elections now : Palestinians have seldom faced a worse, or a more seminal, moment. How, then, might it be grasped? (Edward Said, 6/19/02, El Ahram Weekly)

Six distinct calls for Palestinian reform and elections are being uttered now: five of them [Sharon, the United States, Arab leaders, the Europeans, and Yasser Arafat and his circle of associates] are, for Palestinian purposes, both useless and irrelevant. [...]

Sixth, finally, is the Palestinian people who are now justifiably clamouring both for reform and elections. As far as I am concerned, this clamour is the only legitimate one of the six I have outlined here. [...]

We have never faced a worse, or at the same time, a more seminal moment. [...]

[O]ur society has been nearly wrecked by poor leadership and the insanity of thinking that suicide bombing will lead directly to an Islamic Palestinian state.

You don't need to be a Wilsonian interventionist to think that when a society is being "wrecked" and is pursuing a policy that reflects "insanity" it may be "legitimate" for other countries, particularly its neighbors, to suggest that reform might be in order. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2002 11:38 AM