Palestinian Expansionism

Did a small thing over at The American Spectator today about all the pudgy prisoners whom Israel "kidnapped" from the Palestinian prison in Jericho. Just to show how valid my point is, later articles are all using funny-angled pictures that don't give you the sense of a bunch of fat guys that the initial photograph did.

Here's a fragment:

And to be very honest, no one has a real solution short of importing a million old schoolmarms to civilize the heathens. Neither Sharon nor Olmert nor Netanyahu nor Peretz nor Peres knows how to turn these guys into mensches. Sharon used to think he could beat it out of them and Peres used to think that the chance to make a buck would turn them all into be-bopping yuppies. All of those illusions have long since sunk deep into the human quicksand that is "the Palestinian people."

The only sliver of hope is that they will somehow take control of their own destiny and conclude that violence, to use a phrase from twelve-step programs, "avails them naught." That they had ought do aught more productive. It's just that they don't want to hear it from us. No amount of lecturing or posturing by Israelis or Americans will penetrate their hauteur. Olmert (extending Sharon's policy) is gambling that if he parks them behind a wall and lets them do their own thing, they just might defy all odds and get a grip. It's an awfully slender reed to build a future upon.