Listening to the radio yesterday I heard a well-known (Israeli - duh) journalist say “Historically, only negotiations and not the use of force ended wars“. I guess he never heard of World War II (to mention the most obvious).

I always wonder when I hear that statement, if the author was constantly beat up in school and his lunch money taken away.

But actually, that is symptomatic of what Daniel Pipes describes as the typical Israeli attitude towards war: management & containment, not victory. Pipes feels that Israeli’s don’t understand the concept of total victory and therefore they always stop before it is achieved or worse, never try to achieve it in the first place.

I think the real problem is that Israelis don’t have a goal or vision, so they find themselves floundering when they reach the point where a real decision needs to be made and a (political and military) direction chosen.

Yesterday Haim Ramon made an amazing statement. He declared that "there is no one to negotiate with on the other side". Wow. More than a decade after Oslo Ramon has finally woken up to reality and repeated what the Right has said all along.

While certain sectors keep talking about the “Right” giving up their dream and moving Left (no right-winger I know has done that), are we are perhaps now beginning to see the Left waking up and moving right?

No, of course not.

Because Ramon still doesn’t have what it takes the reach the proper resolution to the problem.

As a Leftist he now believes in running away, hunkering down, and hiding behind a wall - basically giving up.

Again, the concept of victory eludes him, and of course, more creative solutions than simply giving the enemy more access to weapons, more freedom to terrorize, deporting your own population and generally destroying Israeli deterrence are still completely beyond his grasp.

It took Ramon 12 years to admit he and the Left were wrong. Now let’s see how long it will take him to reach the Right conclusions.