Capricious Lunacy
Here are neighbours, two disparate peoples whose ancient history in the Middle East had them neighbours millennia ago in their earlier incarnations as a desert people emerging into a settled, urban life, settling at that time their countless incidents of strife against one another. And they're still at it, still aggrieved and struggling to contain the direction that fate propels them toward. It's an unequal struggle, since one half of the equation has matured socially and intellectually while the other appears to regress day by day.Adolescents mired in their immature demands don't make good bargaining agents for equality when their methods are comprised of anger-managing delusions of entitlement that go well beyond their dues. Hypocritical demands that all or nothing will suffice, lest they be compelled to wreak further havoc; in this instance terrorizing the more mature half of the argument by threatening to continue their passion-fueled trajectory toward delivering death to their 'enemy' even at the cost of diminishing rewards for themselves.
These adolescents are dependent for their material needs upon those they threaten, as in a household with providers and hostile siblings conspiring to unleash hell upon their parents. The more the parents relent, despite their better judgement, and render unto their offspring all they demand, the more the demands increase. The end result is no solution whatever to the impasse; the parents frustrated, frozen with inaction, walking on the eggshells of fearful anticipation - the offspring bitterly dissatisfied, determined that nothing will restore peace between them, ready to commit all to damnation.
On the face of it, the PLO-Fatah-Palestinian Authority administration insists it is finally prepared to bargain in good faith with the State of Israel to reach a mutually-agreed upon settlement where both may agree on boundaries, on issues of insurmountable difficulties between the two populations, leaving the neighbours to live contiguous but separately sovereign lives. Yet while Israel makes every effort to rein in the activities - mostly protest in nature - of its more rigidly-obstreperous citizens, the PA makes no effort whatever to restrain the deadly assaults launched by their militia-factions which rain down deadly rockets on Jewish communities as an expression of their lethal dissatisfaction.
Palestinian terrorists are psychically arrested in tribal warfare mode, a cultural psychosis seemingly shared by much of the Arab world, but while they employ basic tried-and-true guerrilla techniques of instilling fear in their enemies by striking hard through deadly attacks, then slipping quietly back into the civilian population to avoid detection, they also use modern technology. In Gaza the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades admitted gladly to their use of Google's Internet virtual mapping technology to aid them in closely identifying targets within Israel. Each requested location obligingly provides latitude and longitude.
In stark contrast to the PA not intervening and by their passive assent encouraging these depredations upon their neighbour, Israel apprehends those of its citizens whom it deems may present a challenge toward keeping the peace on their side. Residents of border communities who conspire to visit damage to Palestinians, for example by attempting to disrupt stealth activities tearing up Israeli farmers' crops are prohibited from returning to their homes. A political activist well known to promulgate his favouring of Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, Yekutiel Ban-Yaakove, has been presented with an administrative order preventing him from returning to his home in Tapuach for a three-month exile.
The Palestinian Authority, which insists it has authority over Gaza, despite the presence of Hamas, has done nothing whatever to discourage the lobbing of Kassams over the border into the western Negev. As a result the Deputy Defence Minister of Israel recommends electrical power supplied by Israel be cut off to northern Gaza for short periods of time. The committee which he heads has also recommended that Israel's supply of fuel and goods to Gaza be cut. For, "we have no alternative other than to employ these measures" explains the deputy minister. "The situation cannot continue in which we supply the Palestinians with all their needs as usual while they fire at us. Gaza is a hostile entity, and this is a gradual disengagement."
Lest it be forgotten, Israel removed nine thousand of her citizen-settlers from Gaza, to return the territory to the Palestinians in the anticipation that this sacrifice would encourage Palestinians to take full advantage of the opportunities that awaited them. Instead of welcoming the withdrawal of the settlers and the portions of the IDF that were assigned to protect them, Palestinians went on a mission of search-and-destroy, including a series of greenhouses purchased in good faith by philanthropic Jews for the purpose of leaving them intact for Palestinians as a start-up agricultural business.
While the Israeli settlers who were hauled out of Gaza still languish in unsuitable, temporary lodgings bereft of their livelihoods, the Gaza Strip still fulminates and festers. Offering daily assaults against Israeli communities over the border. Because Israel has designated Gaza as an "enemy entity" in reflection of its violent actions against itself by both Hamas terrorists and Fatah militias, Israeli banks have decided to withdraw their services to Gaza. However, The Bank of Israel has blocked this initiative, asking Bank HaPoalim to remain until an alternative, a Postal Bank or having Egyptian banks step in to fill the gap, can occur. Reason? The fear that already-serious economic problems in the Strip will be exacerbated. Impacting deleteriously on the local Palestinian population.
The ordinary people of both Israel and the PA seem to know something that appears to be escaping the attention of the leaders of the Palestinian Authority. That trade and trust can occur between them. A case in point: the purchase by Orthodox Jews of fresh vegetables from Palestinian farmers when law does not permit Jewish farmers to cultivate and harvest their own for certain periods of time leaving the land to "rest" every 7th year. Moreover, when rockets continue to slam down into Israel, flattening buildings and homes, hitting residents and instilling terror, deliveries from Gaza are stopped.
Who exactly are the beneficiaries of the ongoing and seemingly deliberate attempts to forestall the potential for peace between the two countries? Recalcitrant politicians, determined they will wreak damage until every last vestige of Jewish ownership-presence in the area is eliminated. Along with the fascist-inspired secularists, and the Islamist-blessed terrorists both intent on destroying the State of Israel and dispelling its people from the area.
In anticipation of ongoing tribulations in attempting to reach a workable settlement despite all the violence and the belligerent rhetoric orchestrating a PA victory over a hoped-for diminished Israeli presence beginning the long slide to obliteration, a coalition of Jewish organizations has dedicated themselves to a common purpose. That of denying the PA determination, supported by the rest of the Arab world, to take full possession of Jerusalem's Old City.
Claiming that it belongs to Islam, historically, traditionally, culturally. Whereas little-to-no mention has ever been made of the importance of Jerusalem to Islam in the Koran, Jerusalem has been, since time immemorial, the touchstone, the soul of Jewry, as the "eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish people".
What, then, are the odds of the two solitudes ever coming together in enlightened and humane interaction for the attainment of mutual security and an enhanced future for both?
Labels: Conflict, Israel, Middle East, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 25, 2007
<< Home