Gaza Day Two
Posted on December 28th, 2008
by Scott McConnell |
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The Israeli analyst Daniel Levy reminds us why we shouldn’t be indifferent to Israel’s air attacks (with American weapons) on defenseless Palestinians in Gaza.
Here’s the bad news folks – America is involved, up to its eyeballs actually. Today, after Israeli air-strikes that killed over 200 Palestinians in Gaza, the Middle East is again seething with rage. Recruiters to the most radical of causes are again cashing in. If Osama Bin Laden is indeed a cave-dweller these days then U.S. intel should be listening out for a booming echo of laughter. Demonstrations across the Arab world and contributors to the ever-proliferating Arabic language news media and blogosphere hold the U.S., and not just Israel, responsible for what happened today (and that is a position taken, for good reasons, by sensible folk, not hard-liners). America’s allies in the region are again running for cover. America’s standing, its interests and security are all deeply affected. The U.S.-Israel relationship per se is not to blame (that is something I support), the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict is – and thankfully we can do something about that.
But of course, Americans have an irrational hatred of Palestinians; a presidential spokesman (not David Frum or someone) called the Gaza police recruits who were killed by Israeli air strikes “thugs”. Apparently insulting the families of young men who have just been killed for no good reason is fine in the Bush White House, if they’re Palestinian. And we wonder “why they hate us”.
Filed under: Foreign policy
And it’s going to keep on being this crappy for everyone concerned until ’someone’ imposes the only solution that will work. Two states, pre-1967 borders, international troops with a firm mandate lining every inch of them, and massive external financial stimulus.
Give it a decade, and chances are that you’ll have two states where extremism has been pushed to the fringes and
the very idea of starting the conflict up again horrifies the vast majority of their populations. People who’ve been given a way out of an existentialy horrible situation and achieved something better tend to be pathologicaly disinclined to put themselves in that situation again.
But that’s not going to happen until that same ’someone’ makes ending the Israeli Occupation of what will become the nation of Palestine the starting point of any peace deal, rather than something that ‘might’ occur if the Palestinians stop resisting the Occupation long enough for Israelis stop feeling threatened.
The situation that exists now just puts extremists on both sides in the driving seat, which shouldn’t be a good thing in anyone’s book. The fact that neo-conservatives have made achieving this state of existential horror a cornerstone of their foreign policy strategy just puts them safely and securely in the ‘extremist ‘ camp.
Good idea, TonyJ. But I think the wall should be moved to said borders in your plan, and moved onto ISRAELI property.
It would take about a generation before things finally calmed down. There must be justice for the refugees as well, whose right of return is spelled out in UN resolution 194, part 11.
When there is justice, there can be peace. Israel has yet to learn this lesson when it comes to their dealings with the Palestinians, despite their ongoing efforts to seek justice for the Holocaust - a supreme irony.
If by “justice” one means punishment for misdeeds, then there will never be an end to violence, since both sides see each new punishment as a new misdeed.