generalspeaking

Peace In Jeopardy

Naturally, the peace process as it is termed, between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is yet again seen to be in dire straits. Israel continues to be unaccommodating, or perhaps not sufficiently accommodating to the needs of the Palestinians. Hardly surprising, that. Israel famously has that reputation. It remains too concerned about its well-being and the security and safety of its citizens. Tiresomely burdensome to those who wish to bargain in good faith.

And now, with the ascension of second-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his right-wing Likud party, what truly can be expected to ensue from the peace process? After all, outgoing Ehud Olmert of Kadima's centrist party was ready to give away just about everything demanded in sacrifices of Israel to achieve a two-state solution that would ostensibly lead to peace, and he failed just as did the efforts of his predecessors.

It hardly matters, as that upholder of the bastion of peaceful democracy in Syria said, who leads in Israel.

Reaffirming Syria's close relations with Hizbullah and Hamas, President Bashar Assad
said in an interview published in the Kuwaiti paper a-Sharq, "All Israeli governments are the same: Ariel Sharon carried out a massacre in Palestine, and Barak aided the war in Gaza such that there is no difference between Right and Left in Israel." President Assad would know of massacres and wars, since his countrymen have suffered both, from within.

Former Prime Minister Olmert, pledging himself and his country to "the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine" at Annapolis, saw his best efforts and his strenuous resolve dissolve in the face of Palestinian intransigence. One demand finding acquiescence, leading to additional demands ad infinitum. The sense of entitled demands exacting a toll that Israel simply cannot accede to, if it wishes to remain Israel.

Now the European Union and the United States draw back their breaths along with their promises of unalloyed support with the investiture of this new government whose leader agrees to seeing a final accord resulting in the Palestinians having "all the rights to govern themselves except those that can put in danger the security and existence of the state of Israel". Utterly unreasonable.

Why should the longed-for Palestinian state be set aside simply because Israel requires assurances that its existence will not be threatened?

Put another way, is there another country in the world that would agree to the establishment of an utterly hostile state contiguous to its own, if it could prevent it? And why is it not reasonable to suggest that a nascent state prove its capability of governing itself without threat to its neighbour before full nationhood?

Israeli Palestinians, with full citizenship and the privileges that accrue with citizenship do not accept the need of personal attachment to the state, their loyalty is compromised by their vision of themselves as Palestinians first and foremost. Palestinian Members of the Knesset too often act contrarily to the security of Israel, challenging its sovereignty, sneering at its legitimacy.

Israel's valid concerns about the intentions of Theocratic Iran's Islamist detestation of, and denial of, the existence of a Jewish state along with its oft-stated intent to eradicate it from the geography is turned on its head by MK Hanin Zoabi who in a news interview said she welcomes the development of Iran's nuclear weapons.

"The policy of Iran is more useful to the Palestinian issue and more standing against occupation than a lot of the Arab countries. This is our interest. If anyone is supporting me - so I will not mind this influence, even I would ask for this influence." At the reporter's prodding she asserted "I'm not afraid from the nuclear Iranians. I'm more afraid from the Israeli nuclear."

This from a citizen of Israel, an elected Knesset member. And her attitude is not unusual, nor are her loyalties different than that of many other Israeli Palestinians. And one of the conditions imposed upon Israel by the Arab Summit and the Palestinian Authority is that Israel agree to absorb the Palestinian refugee 'returnees', ten-fold in increase from the original.

Of course there's also the matter of sacrificing Jerusalem, for a Palestinian capital. The Palestinians, like other Arabs and Muslims being so deferential to the sacred places of other religions, Israel's Jews can anticipate that, as has been done in the past, they will see their sacred places desecrated and demolished. Then there's the matter of obliging with respect to the 'green line', a border acceptable to the Palestinians.

Not to overlook the fact that in insisting that Israel, a state created by Jews for Jews as a haven, a world refuge, is popularly called 'racist' and 'apartheid'. Which the rest of the Arab world most definitely is not, where the Jews who had lived there for millennia were unceremoniously thrown out sans material belongings. Achieving the Judenrein conditions that fascist Germany longed for.

Israel Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman, as Israel's new coalition government's Foreign Minister is considered to be ultra-nationalist because he wants his country to remain a Jewish one, and his stated initiative to institute a loyalty test to the state has scandalized diplomats from the West and their governments. But it's a practical step to ensure that Israel does not continue to harbour a third column in her midst.

Members of the Knesset, who are all too vociferous in their support for both Hamas and Hezbollah, and share their agenda. One of whom, though he delivered classified documents to Hezbollah during Israel's war in Lebanon, in clear treason, still claims the right to receive his pension as a former MK. Why is it a bad idea to advocate the transfer of Arab-dominated cities to the West Bank in exchange for annexing Jewish settlements?

It makes eminently good sense. Arab and Muslim countries continue to rage over Israel's having taken Arab land, land consecrated to Islam, and to rail against the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from land traditionally theirs. It was traditionally Jewish land, too. We don't see Iraq and Turkey and Syria offering to return Kurdish land to the Kurds who desperately wish for their own state to be restored to them.

Nor do we see Pakistan offering to return sacred land and shrines and temples (Gurdwaras) to the Sikhs from whom they wrested it in a bloody battle and the creation of the State of Pakistan. Nor does Saudi Arabia appear prepared to give up the sacred and neglected Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina after having adopted Wahhabism, wresting them from the emirates which once controlled them.

Everything is relative, isn't it? Depending on whose ox is being gored.

Labels: Israel, Middle East, Political Realities

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, April 02, 2009