Apolitical I don't know about, but being professional and disciplined is useful in any army, including -perhaps especially- a regime-protection force. And the Egyptian Army seems to be a pretty fine example of how to do it right; if nothing else they refused an order to open fire on unarmed civilians, which is more than can be said for the armed forces of some allegedly democratic regimes I could name.MarshalPurnell wrote:Why do you think the PLO would want a military that is a professional, disciplined, apolitical force? The institutional corruption and incompetence that is a hallmark of the Palestinian Authority strongly suggests that, like the Palestinian police, any army would be another regime protection force first and foremost. Decades of foreign training have not helped the Egyptians or the Syrians or the Saudis. All of the efforts of the United States to raise a new Iraqi Army from scratch, with the expenditure of a far, far greater amount of resources than any nation would (or could) conceivably devote to Palestine, have not produced a military that meets Israeli standards of capability.
The diplomatic calculations, yes. The political ones, not so much. Arming the Palestinians would not be the stupidest thing ever done in the name of looking good in the run-up to an election.Also of course the diplomatic calculations involved in intervening heavily in this situation are a bit more complex than "pissing off the Yankees would be really good for domestic consumption." Among other things, the gains you suggest are, charitably, very optimistic projections that assume the Arab governments actually mean it when they say they want an independent Palestine.