The tradeoff is between an open society, and complete isolation. It's a more serious version of the same thing we're dealing with over here, relative to immigration and all that. The isolation would be much more secure, and "in theory" we could lock down the borders and reduce the cross-border flow to a trickle, but that would be expensive in other terms, and in an ideal world that's not the direction we'd want to go. Unfortunately, it's not an ideal world. The balance in that tradeoff, keeps shifting, depending on conditions. And when you've got a mortal enemy knocking at your door, well....

I don't really see how a "buffer zone" is going to help Israel. At best, it's a temporary and only partially meaningful solution. But, maybe all sides will get a little breathing space, and time to consider what's really in their best interests. Hezbollah can't win, and everyone knows it. And Israel can't completely eliminate Hezbollah, but that's not necessarily the goal either. In this world, there will always be dangerous people, and there will always be heavily armed people. It would be far better if they didn't have any incentive to act out, but sometimes they want to blow your house down anyway.

And when those kinds of conditions exist, other people will try to take advantage of them. This latest tape from that madman Zawahiri, is a perfect example. He's declared his intention to build an Islamic state stretching from Spain to Iran, and I can guarantee you that the rest of the world will never let that happen. But the evil and insidious suggestion that it "could" happen, and it "should" happen, just based on his say-so, is patently ridiculous to most of us - however it does appeal to "some" people, and anyone who listens to that drivel then becomes a dangerous person in his or her own right.

This is why it's so vitally important for the Muslim world to control its own. As long as there is tacit support for atrocities, regardless of which side is doing them, the need to "control" will continue, and no one will benefit. In an ideal world, we'd all have lots of freedoms, but we won't get that until the killing stops. It's not a matter of who's right and who's wrong. It's a question of how to stop the killing now. It's going to take a much better person than a Nasrallah or an Olmert to make that happen. It's going to take the courage of someone like a Sadat or a Begin. Peace begins at the table, not on the battlefield. And it's not a matter of getting what you want, it's a question of reaching conditions that you can live with, and that both sides will respect because it's in their mutual interest to do so.