Israel must step towards peace
The geo-political make-up of the Middle East is largely an artificial solution imposed on the region by the West. Within that framework, Israel is a state under permanent siege, surrounded by Arab countries that are mostly, but not exclusively, hostile. The avowed aim of some of these countries is the destruction of Israel. Throughout the decades Israel has responded to that situation by becoming aggressively defensive of its democracy and has had to fight wars against numerically superior odds to avoid annihilation.
As part of this process, it has seized lands which it declined to hand back at the cessation of hostilities on the grounds that they were necessary defensive buffer zones. And it has dealt harshly with the Palestinian people who have endured unending refugee status in their search for a homeland -- a plight that must surely strike a chord in the Jewish heart. But the Jewish heart has been hardened by the incessant actions of those Islamist extremists who say they will not rest until Israel is no more. The Hamas extremists of Gaza, who are also the elected government of that Palestinian settlement, are the conduit for routine deadly rocket attacks on Israeli citizens. They have been supplied and encouraged, to varying degrees, in the past by Iran, Syria and Libya -- all intensely anti-democratic states.
The Israelis have earned a reputation for toughness and, even, bullying cruelty for the manner in which they have responded to these attacks, mainly because their enemies have proved to be militarily so inferior. Their invasion of Gaza in December 2008 in response to rocket attacks was widely described as overkill and inappropriate. So too has their blockade of Gaza from the sea in an attempt to stem the supply of arms to Hamas.
Gaza is now under siege from Israel. And as with any siege, ordinary people suffer. Last week's attempt by an international flotilla carrying building materials and hospital supplies was described by a spokesperson for those on board as an attempt to break the illegal -- meaning without UN sanction -- blockade of Gaza.It is worth noting that this was not just about bringing in aid, since the Israelis offered to take the aid in once they had checked it for weapons -- an offer that was rejected by the flotilla organisers and by Hamas.
However, it is in the way they went about enforcing the blockade that the Israelis have let themselves down. Boarding foreign ships in international waters under cover of darkness using armed commandos arriving by air and sea, is not a normal police action. It is too similar to the activities of pirates off the coast of East Africa. And if you create such a conflict situation, you cannot reasonably claim self-defence afterwards when civilians are slaughtered because they showed some resistance. For Israel its aggressive defensive stand, including the provocative building of Jewish settlements on disputed lands, has always drawn international criticism. Lebanon was made a wasteland when employed as a proxy battle ground. They have managed to frustrate and infuriate friends around the world -- even the patience of their most powerful ally, the US, and several of its presidents, has been severely tested at times.
George Mitchell, who proved such an effective peace-maker in Northern Ireland, must wonder if there can ever be a solution to the Middle East. But if the tragic events of last week show anything, it is the need for a totally new beginning. Israel cannot settle for the status quo, secure in the knowledge that it is always likely to have enough military superiority to keep its permanently angry neighbours in check. That is no longer an acceptable way of life for the people of the Middle East. For Mr Mitchell, it is a tremendous challenge to find common ground between Islamists who wish Israel gone and Israelis who will not consider meaningful peace talks until substantial pre-conditions have been met. But too many generations on both sides have gone to their graves after unfulfilled lives of misery, for this to go on.
Not all of Israel's Arab neighbours are rabidly anti-Israeli. And if Israel, from its present position of relative strength, were to take the first step towards peace, with a spirit of generosity, future generations of Israelis and of their Arab neighbours, as well as the rest of the world, would owe them a massive debt of gratitude.
Originally published in
