After a week-long, self-imposed Internet quarantine, I returned to San Francisco and to news that Israel’s operations in Gaza had escalated to a ground invasion.
The kind of violence imposed on the Palestinians is suffocatingly stale, even from a distance. It’s a violence without imagination, without even a mirage of hope. The motivations of both Hamas and the Israeli government appear desperate and provincial in an unhinged, school-boy-like rabidity. How can a moderate partner in peace possibly rise from the remains of innocent Palestinians shredded by American-built bombs raining down on Gaza?
On blame and victimhood:
Undoubtedly, Israel is slaughtering the Palestinians, but Hamas is walking them to the slaughter house. The UN condamns; the US vetoes; the Iranians arm; the Arab governments shake Israeli hands in the back alleys of international politics while at home they deflect from their defectiveness by indulging their citizens to demonstrate against Israel – a healthy stress reliever; the Islamists collect donations to build more mosques in Gaza and recruit more suicide bombers; Palestinian children die.
And Israel’s strategic short-sightedness:
… What is the exit plan here? Pound Hamas until they cry uncle? And why would Israel be willing to trade some temporary advantages in Gaza for a number of strategic setbacks: the effective end of the Annapolis process, a possible collapse of the peace track with Syria, worldwide opprobrium, a reinvigorated radical camp in Iran, the further undermining of pro-Western regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and a Hamas that may in fact emerge stronger vis-à-vis the ever-shrinking Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction?
January 4, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Well put.