Stalemate in Palestine after 60 years

[oberliner]

In a few months, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be 60 years old, if we use the 1948 war and the establishment of Israel as its starting point. What happened in Palestine and Israel this week? Israeli troops attacked assorted targets in Gaza, killing dozens of militants and civilians. Various Palestinian resistance groups (the US, Israel, Micronesia and a few other powers see them only as terrorist groups) fired hundreds of missiles into Israel. The Israeli government threatened tougher military measures, "no mercy", and a tighter blockade of the Gaza Strip, including cutting off all fuel supplies. Israeli and Palestinian leaders met to negotiate a peace accord, while US President George W. Bush traveled to the region to show his support for a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace agreement.

What's wrong with this picture? The juxtaposition between military action on the ground and the words and acts of politicians is dizzying in its contradictions. Sixty years after the tensions between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine erupted into a full war, we continue to experience warfare as a routine mode of interaction between Israelis and Arabs, mostly on the Palestinian-Israeli front, and occasionally on the Lebanese-Israeli front. Simultaneously, politicians explore opportunities to end the conflict through a negotiated peace agreement, but without any major successes on the Palestinian-Israeli front.

The most important single development in recent weeks, I suspect, was the Palestinians' firing of longer-range missiles into southern Israel, some of them traveling over 15 kilometers. They have caused very little material damage in Israel; they frighten and traumatize many people, and have killed maybe half a dozen Israelis over the years, while Israeli attacks against Gaza and the West Bank in the past year have killed hundreds of Palestinians.


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=88161

[bemildred]

1. Kick. nt

[LeftishBrit]

2. A most interesting article...

and 'hear hear!' to the final paragraph of the article.