World View: Israel Cancels the Fourth Prisoner Release, Jeopardizing 'Peace Talks'

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Chicago has coldest winter on record
• Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing ‘peace talks’
• Pakistan government flip-flops and frees 19 Taliban militants from jail

Chicago has coldest winter on record

The average temperature in Chicago over the last four months was 22degrees Fahrenheit, with a record 26 days at or below zero, and over80 inches of snow, making 2013-04 the coldest winter on record. Thesecond coldest winter was 1903-04, when the average temperature was22.3.

Weather forecasts for the early spring are for below averagetemperatures. CBS Chicago

Israel cancels the fourth prisoner release, jeopardizing ‘peace talks’

Israel has canceled the release from Israeli jails of the last of thefour groups of Palestinian prisoners who has been convicted ofterrorist acts prior to the 1994 Oslo accords. Releasing theseprisoners, whom Palestinian officials refer to as “politicalprisoners,” was a pre-condition to getting Palestinian presidentMahmoud Abbas to agree to participate in the “peace talks” that theObama administration and Secretary of State John Kerry had beenpushing last month.

The last batch of prisoners was scheduled for releast last week onFriday, and the self-imposed deadline for the “peace talks” to reach aconclusion is April 29. But both sides have been playing brinkmanshipwith the April 29 date approaching. Abbas demanded that hundreds moreprisoners be released. Then Israel’s prime minister BenjaminNetanyahu delayed last Friday’s prison release. On Wednesday, Abbasapplied to 15 United Nations agencies as the State of Palestine. Now,on Thursday, Netanyahu has canceled the prisoner releasepermanently. Whether these actions on both sides are final ortemporary negotiating tactics is not known.

Kerry is said to be very downcast. He was very optimistic nine monthsago, thinking that he and President Obama, the latter being thesmartest person in the room, no matter what the room, thought thatthey would become the greatest politicians in history by bringingpeace to the Mideast. But now Kerry is quoted as saying that there’snothing more he can do, and adds, “You can lead a horse to water, butyou can’t make it drink.” The “peace talks” were never anythingmore than a show anyway, and were considered a joke throughoutthe Mideast.

I’ve been writing about this for over ten years, since May 2003 whenPresident George Bush issued his “Mideast Roadmap to Peace.” From the point of view ofGenerational Dynamics, peace in the Mideast is impossible, and thatthe Arabs and the Jews will be re-fighting their genocidal war thatbegan last time in 1947 with the partitioning of Palestine and thecreation of the state of Israel. The traumatized survivors of thatwar spent their lives doing everything they could to keep anything sohorrible from happening to the children and grandchildren, and theysucceeded in that. But now almost all of those survivors are gone,with the major exception being Mahmoud Abbas himself, and the youngergenerations have no hesitancy in risking steps that could spiral intoall out war. When Abbas retires or dies, then the last major obstacleto such a war will be removed.

The smartest man in the room thinks that he can heal the earth, rollback the tides, and bring peace to the Mideast because he believesthat politicians control events. As I’ve said many times, it’s abasic principle of Generational Dynamics that even in a dictatorship,major policies and events are determined by masses of people, entiregenerations of people, and not by politicians. Thus, Hitler was notthe cause of WW II. What politicians say or do is irrelevant, exceptinsofar as their actions reflect the attitudes of the people that theyrepresent, and so politicians can neither cause nor prevent the greatevents of history. I invoked this principal in my report three days ago when I wrote that theRussian public may force president Vladimir Putin to orderthe invasion of Ukraine:

“The Russian people are experiencing passions offerocious intensity to achieve victories that prove Russia’sUkraine, it could be politically disastrous for him. Instead, hemay have to find a way to maximize the “shock and awe” from hisnext strike.”

In the case of the Mideast, a peace deal will be blocked not by thepoliticians but by the people, especially young people. Young peoplein Palestinian militias, in Gaza, or in Palestinian refugee camps, forexample, will never go along with any “peace agreement.” Israel haspopulations of settlers who refuse to give up their settlement homes,populations of Orthodox Jews who believe that control of the region istheir sacred destiny, and populations of ordinary people that fearthat a “peace deal” would only mean more terrorist attacks on Israel.

So from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, a Mideast peacedeal really is impossible. BBC andDaily Times (Pakistan)

Pakistan government flip-flops and frees 19 Taliban militants from jail

Freeing prisoners in exchange for “peace talks” seems to be thetheme in Pakistan, as well as in the Mideast. The Talibanannounced a one-month ceasefire on March 1, nominally to give

The Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban – TTP) have been demandingthat hundreds of Taliban militants being help in Pakistan’s jailed befreed, in exchange for continuing the “peace talks.” Prime MinisterNawaz Sharif has consistently denied that he would agree to releaseprisoners, but on Thursday it emerged that he’s been releasing Talibanprisoners all along — three on March 21, five on March 25th, and 11on March 28. The prisoners are described as “non-combatants.”

Early on Thursday, a government spokesman said, “The government hasneither released any Taliban prisoner nor the prime minister gave anyapproval for any such measure,” but later in the day it emerged thatSharif had personally authorized the release of the 19 prisoners, andis considered the release of hundreds more. Sharif kept the releasesecret from the public because of massive pressure from the militaryestablishment, who oppose the release of TTP prisoners because oftheir alleged involvement in terror attacks across the country.

The Generational Dynamics principles that I discussed above withrespect to the Mideast “peace talks” also apply here. It’sgenerations of people, not the politicians, that decide great events,and Sharif’s confused flip-flops illustrate the problem. Many in thepublic support, or at least passively support, the TTP, even when theyconduct a terrorist attack in someone else’s back yard, and choose tobelieve that the United States involvement in Afghanistan is thereason for the terrorist attacks. They’re hopin’ and prayin’ thatwhen the U.S. withdraws later this year, then the attacks will stop.From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this cannot happen.Pakistan and India are headed for a massive war, re-fighting one ofthe worst wars of the century, the genocidal war between Hindus andMuslims that followed the 1947 partitioning of the Indian subcontinentinto the nations of Pakistan and India. Daily Times (Pakistan)

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