Negotiating Partners
The neighbours, verily concerned, are doing their part. Jordan is anxious for a resolution to the conflict. Egypt is doing its damnedest to broker a ceasefire between Hamas and the IDF, and it did actually hold fast for at least a day or so. Before the assurances of mutual determination to hold back from hostilities proved just too much to sustain.First one breach of the ceasefire, then another, and then yet another. Palestinian militants claiming "not our fault!" because the IDF responds to provocations such as the laying down of explosive devices just where troop transports are certain to encounter them. Or the IDF, witnessing preparations for the lobbing of Kassam rockets undertakes to halt the process.
Israel's military, rather devoted to ensuring the safety and security of the country and its inhabitants are not simply disinterested onlookers, prepared to look the other way while Palestinian militants continue their assaults on border communities. And when the IDF responds, that's when Fatah and Hamas scream "ceasefire violation!".
Members of the Knesset, among them Tsipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, has urged the government to instruct its troops to respond instantly to any and all cease-fire violations. "The firing of rockets by Fatah and the demands of those firing for a truce in Judea and
Samaria (West Bank) - these are a result of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas which is interpreted as surrender on Israel's part", claimed MK Isaac Ben-Israel.
And it's simply a fact of life in that geography. Jihadists give no quarter, they will submit to the brokering of a temporary ceasefire only if and when it suits their larger purpose. And if that purpose is to buy time, to enable them to muster their resources, stockpile additional munitions, permit their hard-working militias to take a break, then it works for them. After which, it is no-holds-barred attacks resumed.
"Israel must respond militarily if it seeks life." stated Mr. Ben-Israel, in recognition of the reality of Israel's situation in attempting to deal with those whose goal and purpose is the extermination of Israel from the region; complete eradication of its presence. A larger Palestinian state to lay claim to the entire region. Sderot and Ashkelon are still being fired upon. It's been made abundantly clear time and again that there is no placating Hamas.
What so many in the international community don't seem to realize is that Fatah's militant factions are as adamant about achieving the same goal as Hamas, as it's possible to be. Despite its "political" wing assuring the world at large, and Israel in particular, that a Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is capable of, and willing to sue for peace with Israel. The conditions for peace laid out, with no divergence, no sacrifices, no mutuality, just complete surrender.
A surrender to the conditions laid out, needless to say, manifestly seeking a solution similar to that which Hamas espouses, but with somewhat less bloodshed, but perhaps only, in the final analysis, marginally. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the armed wing of the PA's president Mahmoud Abbas's "secular" Fatah faction is unhappy with the tenuous agreement Hamas has reached with Israel.
Israel's partner in peace negotiations is incapable, unwilling and disinterested in encouraging his own factions to honour peace negotiations in a civil manner. All of the militant fundamentalists whose single-purpose agenda is the ouster of Israel from the territory - not the territories - can be relied upon to heap scorn on a nation willing to negotiate, to appease, when faced with unappeasable hatred.
It's interpreted as a symptom of weakness, a loss of determination; construed as a victory. "I don't care who fired. Every breach must be met with an immediate military response", according to Ms. Livni. "I made my opinion clear to both the prime minister and the defence minister following the first infraction." And now the fifth violation has occurred. And Tsipi Livni is grooming herself for the position where she may make the ultimate decisions.
Islamic Jihad has joined Hamas in its ceasefire agreement with Israel, after having been responsible for the initial infraction. Hamas having stated it had no intention of policing other terror militias to toe the line. The truce, a hudna, a temporary measure to permit the militias to gather strength and arms may yet be nothing more, nothing less than another delusionary tactic for a country attempting to deal with an impossible situation of military encirclement.
And then there is always Hezbollah, looking on, urging steadfastness in "resistance to the occupier", the deadly enemy of Palestinians. Would that those Palestinians who live in despair at the vacant futures they anticipate, the incessant unsettlement they experience, could assert themselves to demand full and total abandonment of such "resistance". They, then, along with equal measures of Israelis, sick and tired of living under constant siege, could force an amicable recognition of one another as simply human beings struggling to live their lives.
No more kidnapped Israelis, or broken bodies shattered by suicide blasts. An end to the fears of children never knowing when another rocket will slam down on their communities. No more fears of Palestinian mothers to allow their children to play in public, lest they be hit by wayward IDF fire. It is not the elected law makers, the administrators who can succeed in these vital attempts at negotiating peace.
It is the ordinary people on both sides who must stand together and state unequivocally that they have had enough and more than enough. It is the necessity of both peoples to stand together in recognition of one another, to offer themselves to one another, just as grieving parents of children killed in conflict offered their dead child's organs to benefit the ill, whether Jewish or Arab.
Labels: Israel, Justice, Societal Failures, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Friday, June 27, 2008
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