Kaletsky's Crap

Anatole Kaletsky is a London Times columnist, its Principal Economic Commentator and an associate editor, too.

You'd expect that he would be intelligent, moderate and circumspect.

Well, consider this bit of crap:-

This brings us finally to the most intractable challenge: Middle East peace. The most encouraging message from Davos was that political exhaustion among Israeli and Palestinian politicians has combined with the dread of an Iraq-style bloodbath in other countries to produce a greater readiness to settle the Israeli problem once and for all, through the exchange of land for peace. If Israel would give back the territories seized in 1967 from the Palestinians, the entire Arab world may be ready to accept this as a final solution and agree to a permanent peace.

The question is how to catalyse such a “grand bargain”, which might also involve Iran. With the Bush Administration completely discredited and distrusted, Europe, and even Britain, could take a lead in several ways.

First, by making it absolutely explicit that they would oppose a military attack on Iran in any shape or form — if necessary by imposing economic sanctions in the event of a military strike by Israel without an explicit UN mandate. That Europe is a far bigger trade partner than America for all Middle Eastern countries points to a more constructive strand of diplomacy: the application of economic carrots and sticks. Iran is rightly being sanctioned for its defiance on the nuclear issue. But Israel has never faced any serious sanctions when it has refused to comply with the UN.

While 70 per cent of the Israeli population back a land-for-peace deal, extremist minorities are overrepresented in the Israeli political system, just as they are in Iran. One way to try to break their power is to reinforce the carrot of future peace with a stick that makes preservation of the status quo unattractive.

A threat to suspend the very generous trade privileges now enjoyed by Israel in the EU should only be a last resort in the event of unreasonable Israeli intransigence in a land-for-peace deal. By raising the possibility of trade sanctions Britain could send a powerful message to Israeli business and politicians that simply maintaining the post-1967 status quo is no longer an option.

Politicians often boast of thinking the unthinkable. Sometimes they should just do the obvious instead.

Does he not conceive of the possibility that his unthinkable thinking is just so obviously idiotic?