"The neoconservatives told us that the road to Jerusalem lay through Baghdad. They meant that invading Iraq and installing a democracy there would lead to peace in Israel and Palestine. The way they imagined that peace was a neocolonial landgrab: a greater Israel with portions of the West Bank amalgamated by Jordan. Still, that is what they believed-- that creating democracy in Iraq would lead to a peace in Palestine.
"These ideas are in smithereens today. The Palestine Papers have revealed that the peace process was a Trojan horse for Israeli expansionism and that even the American client in the West Bank could not accept a future state without Ariel and Ma'ale Adunim, the long fingers of Jewish territory.
"And the lessons of Iraq and Tunisia and Egypt are that you don't install democracy anywhere; no, democracy must arise from the people themselves, you damage the processes of establishing popular will by seeking to impose such a system. The western democratic revolutions also arose from within.
"The lesson of Tunisia and Egypt for American foreign policy is that the United States is the most conservative force in the world, in this region. It didn't see democracy coming because it didn't want to see it coming to the Arab world and to the palaces we supported. And when democracy did come, the U.S. creditably reversed field in Tunisia, but has stuck by its dictator in Egypt."
To read the whole story:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/weiss_jerusalem_cairo
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And to see what's happening in Cairo in real time, go to:
http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
Not if Egypt can prevent it:
Egypt's Al Jazeera bans channel's key role
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