This would be a powerful diktat in itself if it were not for a simple fact whose power to drive this conflict is undeniable and will not die: that Hezbollah and before that the PLO, Islamic Jihad and the myriad other Palestinian and other arab organizations espouse not merely the dissolution of the state of Israel, but the destruction of all jews.
Not that I don't think Israel itself isn't at least partly responsible for engendering that kind of animus. But the fact is that arabs were complicit with the Nazis before Israel even existed. Even acknowledging Israel's "right to exist" was something that Arafat and the PLO only came to grudgingly, agonizing in each halting step toward the Camp David accords until Arafat could shake Peres' hand in the Rose Garden. And even then the PLO charter did not actually reflect that agreement.
The hypocrisy of Israel covers for the hypocrisy of the neo-cons, which plays to the basest human instincts for territory under the Divine Intervention of God. In this regard, the conflict in the ME is the passion play of humanity, the violent resolution of the fundamental relative dogma that requires borders and territory and control of resources for one's own kind to the exlusion of others. Unfortunately, as long as some of us define our own security as requiring the subjugation of others, we are in for a long long haul as a species.
If this play were ultimately to resolve in anything resembling peace, it will require the dissolution of the state of Israel, a welcoming return and reparations to the dispossessed, the formation of new joint institutions to revitalize economies, the destruction of arms, the honoring of the dead on all sides, the celebration of labor, the renunciation of violence once and for all, the end of subjugation and economic exploitation, and the transformation of the entire region into the cradle of faith and civilization that it once was.
How likely is that? |
