Israel: Synonymous With Controversial
"We extend our hand in peace to the Palestinians. Israel has proven time and again it is ready for concessions in exchange for real peace, and the situation today is no different.
"With a Palestinian partner that is willing to hold negotiations in goodwill, Israel will be ready for a historic compromise that will end the conflict with the Palestinians once and for all."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Wouldn't that just be incredible, to present to the world, finally and at long last, a credible and acceptable-by-both-sides peace agreement that would result in side-by-side, equally respecting solitudes? Solitudes that would, nonetheless, mesh trade and exchange -- admittedly give-and-take; Israel giving, the Palestinians taking -- in new technologies and scientific undertakings geared to produce healthy, productive and safely secure societies for both.
And the process in completion taking the wind out of the traditionally incorrigible complaint of the Arab world that they are beholden to oppose the existence of the State of Israel on Islamic geography, and that Israel's presence is responsible for all the ills that befall the Arabs, and that Israeli 'occupation' of Palestinian land is a constant goad to war, and that until the Palestinians have a land of their own, Israel must be opposed.
As...if.
The offer is there. It has always been there. Reasonable people making reasonable demands of one another are capable of arriving at reasonable resolutions. The very concept of 'reason' and 'reasonable', however, appears to have escaped its potential in the Middle East, in cultures and traditions so deeply engrained in tribal animosities and sectarian slaughters.
To the Palestinians reason is the crafty insistence that 'right of return' be honoured, and 'puff!' no more Israel.
On that issue, then, Israel remains unreasonable. Unwilling to allow itself to be swallowed in a sea of 'returnees', demanding their rightful inheritance. Israel, strangely enough, considers the Holy Land on which it now sits as their rightful inheritance. Religious fanatics among the Muslims disagree; the land was bequeathed by a successor-god to Abraham's original selection guided by the hand of the Almighty -- to them.
Might, at one time, made right. And it does, mostly. Except when Jews are concerned, and then they are held to a standard that they themselves pledge to, except it is the world outside Israel that holds them to it. Which does seem unreasonable, given that nowhere else in the world does this appear to be demanded of a nation that has successfully managed to protect itself from one wave of attacks after another, and in the process acquiring more of the land that was originally its own.
But a conciliatory tone is always pleasant, and this occasion, marking the first-ever visit to Israel of the current American president, calls for such a tone. That it may also represent a sincere effort to cajole the Palestinians back to the bargaining table is another issue altogether. The Palestinians sanctimoniously insist that concessions must remain on one side of the table only.
They will not be persuaded to reason, otherwise.
Labels: Controversy, Crisis Politics, Defence, Heritage, Human Relations, Israel, Judaism, Palestinian Authority, Security, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, March 20, 2013
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