Mid-East Chaos
The crisis continues into a sixth day. Here is the BBC take on today’s top story: BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | ‘Ten die’ as Israel hits vehicles
There is no end to this conflict. Israel can mount all the offensives it wants. It can obliterate all the towns and cities it wants. It will be forced to oocupy more and more land to create ever larger “buffer zones”. The fact remains that as long as no one wants peace , and no one does, all this fighting gains is exactly nothing.
The radicals amongst the Arabs have used the impotence of the US to organize an effort to stir up a wider war against Israel. The ostensible start to this round of fighting was the kidnapping of a few Israeli soldiers. But was that the start? How about the settlement by radical Israelis of Arab land? Is that not an act of provocation? Is that not an act of war?
Neither side in this conflict can be trusted to want peace: both have untamed radical elements; both have deep seated enmity for the other side; both fear stability: the Arabs because it might show up their inability to rein in the radical Islamists in their midst, and the Israelis because peace might bring an end to American aid. So like children they continue long after the original cause of strife has been forgotten. Nowadays fighting is their way of life.
If the Israeli population was really concerned for peace they would long ago have denounced the religious extremists that still weigh too heavily in their politics. And if the Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon wanted peace they would have turned out the radicals of Hamas and Hezbollah and exposed them as the puppets of authoritarianism.
Instead tribalism on both sides dominates. And tribalism is a sure way to perpetual hatred and war.
And where in all this is George Bush? Nowhere. Weakened by Iraq, made impotent by America’s single minded and unthinking support of Israel, and distracted by fear of North Korea and Iran all he can do is waffle. He blandly suggests that the Lebanese “deal with Hezbollah” as if they can. He wonders aloud whether Syria could rein in the terrorists. And he continues his uncritical support of Israel in its destruction of civilians.
The Middle East is in chaos and George can do nothing. So low has he brought America.
