On Second Thought...

Aaron David Miller, an American "peacemaker" who for 20 years sought in vain to get Israel to give up the Golan Heights as part of a "peace" deal, has decided that it's a good thing he didn't succeed. Miller writes:

[It] can be said with certainty . . . that had Israel given up the Golan, the situation today would have been much more complex. In response to the Syrian civil war and the rise of Islamic State, Israel would have faced a hot front, confronting Hizballah, Iran, and a range of Islamist jihadists. Given the Golan’s strategic importance, Israel would have had to reoccupy it and would have found itself in the middle of Syria’s civil war. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Israel’s actions would have been a unifying factor and might have actually bucked up the Assad regime as it tried to rally Syrians against the “Zionist enemy.”

Mosaic magazine calls Miller's about-face "a cautionary tale for well-intentioned U.S. and Israeli peacemakers alike."

True enough, but I don't expect most well-intentioned peacemakers to take it that way because they value "peace" at any cost/Peace in Our Time in our time/Peace Now above any other consideration, including Israel's survival.