Wednesday, December 01, 2010

No Kidding

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The prime minister of Israel, a man hardly accustomed to representing global consensus, on Monday found himself in lockstep with most of his peers as he warned that statecraft itself was imperiled by a reality in which no secret is safe if it is written.
"It will be more difficult for talented American diplomats to put into cables and reports things they once would have," Benjamin Netanyahu said. Governments would more likely hoard information, he warned, restricting the circle of people in the know to minimize the chances of a leak.

It is a delicate message for elected leaders to make, of course, because it depends on the proposition that there is a limit to what the people should know, or at least when they should know it.

Netanyahu argued that the ability to communicate under a cloak of secrecy was critical to Israel's ability to reach a peace deal with Egypt in 1979. Had the Israeli public known that Prime Minister Menachem Begin was preparing to cede the entire Sinai desert, captured in 1967, the foment might have scuttled the emerging agreement, Netanyahu suggested.



Source

1 comment:

Juniper in the Desert said...

You bet!! We should NEVER in a million years given Sinai back! Our history is embedded in it and we needed it as a buffer zone, against Egypt, terrorism, Somalia and Sudan. I was priviledged to have visited Sinai when it was Israel, staying in Dahab when it was just a Bedouin village come encampment. We slept in the open and went snorkelling in the Red Sea! Pure magic!!