Wednesday, January 16, 2008

How Goes The Peace Process?

What's that weary old response to any problematical question...? As well as might be expected? The patient is heavily medicated, still in the operating room, things don't look too promising, but he is expected to survive. The quality of survival is yet to be anticipated. Once in the recovery room, it might better be estimated the manner in which he can be expected to function in the future.

Best-case scenario, he will become capable of functioning at a fairly low level, succeeding in performing slight maintenance tasks for himself. Worse-case scenario, he will survive, but on constant life-support; essentially in a vegetative state. But then, what can one expect? This patient's prospects never appeared robust to begin with.

Given that he presented with grave injuries to self-esteem, manipulating with undue force rather than employing gentler, more moderate strength to the simple virtue of going along to get along. Despite showing some promise in the past, his character denied him the potential of growing into an enterprising persona, choosing instead the morbidity of certain defeat.

There are those who trusted in his ability to overcome the odds that geographic location and an unfortunate familial history encumbered him with, but the simple fact remained, he was unable to muster the moral and ethical strength required to lift him above his struggling reality, and in the end, he failed.

That little parable aside, the moderate PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, appearing at a PLO meeting taking place in Ramallah and broadcast on PA television - post-meeting with George W. Bush where Mr. Abbas gave his heartfelt commitment to achieving peace with Israel - showed a backdrop of a map of the area, with Israel somehow gone missing.

Some dire misadventure had obviously occurred in the drawing up of the map resulting in the unfortunate depiction of all of what should be Israel being labeled "Palestine", and draped in a keffiyeh, a rifle alongside the map. Which is not to deny President Abbas's passionate commitment to bargaining honestly and with full integrity with Israel to define borders of a new state committed to Palestinians.

Despite Israel's perfidy in continuing to flout the guidelines set out to ensure that each of the principals adhere to pre-bargaining needs; on the part of Israel to halt settlements, and for the PA to halt the constant terror attacks on Israel. Israel has defiantly continued its plans for housing in east Jerusalem, and must therefore, thunders President Abbas, take full responsibility for the failure of peace talks.

But, burbles the onlooker tentatively, what of the security accorded within the borders of Israel, what of the constant barrage of rockets? Well, what of it? There goes Israel again, always complaining, and sending troops into Gaza. Only two days ago they killed 19 Palestinians, one the son of a top Hamas leader.

That might have been propelled by Kassam rockets compelling three thousand Israeli residents of Sderot to abandon their homes after 7 years under siege by PA and Hamas terrorists. And the Hamas leader in question? Well, Mahmoud al-Zahar, whose son Hussein al-Zahar was latterly dispatched, is one of the founders of Hamas, serving currently as Foreign Minister in the Hamas-dominated Gaza PA.

This is Mr. al-Zahar's second agony. The first occurred in 2003 when his house was bombed in an airstrike slightly wounding him, and killing his older son Khaled. Mr. al-Zahar is vehemently dedictated to the creation of "Hamastan", located in Gaza, Hamas's response to the secular Fatah's vision of "Palestine-the-state". Peace?

It is as Golda Meir was once reported to have remarked, that peace may be achievable once Palestinians love their children more than they hate Israel. It was true then, and no less true now, decades along. And might that ever become a reality? Can there be any objectivity in relations between Jew and Arab? Can balance, moderation, acceptance, a vision of equality ever come to pass?

"What happened today is a massacre, a slaughter against the Palestinian people", declared Mr. Abbas, characterizing the IDF operation in Gaza as yet another blow to the peace process. How, after all, can you bargain with such people, who think nothing of advancing across their border and brutally preying on innocent people who want nothing more than a homeland of their own?

"These massacres cannot bring peace", bemoans Mahmoud Abbas. Israel now mourns the death of an temporary kibbutz worker from Ecuador, shot dead by a firing squad from Gaza, a victory hailed by Hamas. Hamas proudly claims responsibility for firing rockets into Israel, wounding 8 Israelis.

Then proceeded to decree three days of mourning and a general strike. Thousands of Palestinians are crying out for vengeance, attending the funerals.

Vengeance is fairly swift in arriving, no great surprise, with Sderot once again, along with other western Negev towns under the fire. Some 80 rockets, a missile and mortar shells raining down in the past 24 hours from Gaza. Ensuring that ambulance and rescue squads are rather busy attempting to locate the explosion sites, while medics treated 5 people in Sderot, others elsewhere.

Four residents were treated for shock or hysteria, one with light wounds from concussions. You'd think they'd be so accustomed to this by now, shock or hysteria would be anomalous to their situation. Schools in Sderot remained empty as they're not fortified to withstand such attacks, and parents unreasonably stopped their children from boarding their school buses.

But the peace process must continue, there is no other alternative, is there? Israel's Ehud Olmert claims a "national responsibility" to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority. "There is no alternative to conducting serious diplomatic negotiations in order to reach peace." While others in the Knesset feel outright dejection at thoughts of the country's uncertain future, given history and undeniable facts relating to the present.

"There was terrorism, there was also a conflict before 1967. And before 1948. Anyone who chooses to ignore that fact brings destruction to the Jewish state", claimed MK Avigdor Lieberman, head of Israel Is Our Home party. Thus far, any accommodation Israel has attempted, to ingratiate itself with the PA, to bargain for fairness on both sides has resulted in failure.

MK Lieberman espouses a different kind of two-state solution. One that will result from a transfer of both territory and population. "We want two states for two peoples, not a state-and-a-half for one nation and half-a-country for the other. We cannot accept the asymmetry of a Jew-free Palestinian state and a bi-national Israel with 20%-plus minorities."
For that, precisely, is what Palestinian bargaining represents under the guise of a search for peace. The kind of accommodation they require is complete submission to their singular agenda. It's called having your cake and eating it too. The Palestinians to achieve the reality of their national dream, to finally have a state of their own, so long denied them by their Arab masters who themselves aspired to own the territory.

Arabs don't mind Jews living in their midst. As they have historically. As a tolerated minority within a larger, governing Arab presence. Dominated by the majority in every conceivable way. And if, on occasion, unfortunate lapses in acceptance occur, as is quite natural in a tribe-based culture and tradition, leading to deadly attacks on Jewish settlements; so be it.

Thus, to date, goes the peace process. Some traditions simply refuse to awkwardly succumb to reason.

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