Patrick Seale Al-Hayat - 02/01/09//
Israel's war in Gaza is an act of political insanity. It is the product of a deeply disturbed society, able neither to curb its military arrogance nor calm its profound paranoia. The consequences are likely to be painful for Israel's long-term prospects.
By radicalising the Palestinians, and by arousing great anger in the Arab and Muslim world, this savage war rules out the possibility of Israel's peaceful integration in the region for the foreseeable future. That may even be its cynical aim, since Israel wants dominance, not peaceful coexistence.
As the F-16s carry out their missions of death, the message to the world is that Israel will continue to live by the sword, as it has done for the past six decades, rather than risk the concessions and compromises which peace would require.
The war has, in fact, confirmed what had long been apparent, namely that Israel has no interest in a negotiated peace. Peace means retraction, it means ceding territory, whereas Israel is still bent on expansion. That is what the continued theft of West Bank land and the mushrooming settlements are all about, together with the demolition of Palestinian homes, the security wall, the settlers-only road network, the stifling of the Palestinian economy by over 600 checkpoints, and countless other cruel vexations.
Peace is, indeed, the main casualty of this war. It is as dead as the corpses in Gaza. The two-state solution has been dealt a deathblow. The tentative Israeli-Syrian talks have been firmly shut down. The Arab Peace Plan, which offered Israel peace and normal relations with all 22 Arab states if it withdrew to its 1967 borders, has been buried in a welter of blood and bomb wreckage.
One of Israel's war aims must surely have been to pre-empt any attempt by the incoming US administration of Barack Obama to re-launch the moribund peace process. Valuable months will now be lost clearing up the mess. As for the outgoing Bush administration, the blatant lies of Condoleezza Rice, who blamed the war solely on Hamas, must serve as the damning political epitaph of the most ineffectual U.S. Secretary of State of modern times.
Israel has never liked Palestinian moderates, for the simple reason that concessions might have to be made to them. To avoid being drawn into negotiations, it has always preferred Palestinian radicals - and when they were not there it has done everything it could to create them. 'How can you negotiate with someone who wants to kill you?' is a familiar Israeli refrain.
The war on Gaza has confirmed Israel's visceral rejection of any expression of Palestinian nationalism. It will kill to prevent it, as sixty years of wars, assassinations and massacres testify. Consciously or not, Israeli leaders seem to fear that any recognition of Palestinian aspirations undermines the legitimacy of their own national enterprise.
It may be that the war was launched precisely because Hamas has recently shown signs of moderation. Its key spokesmen - including Khaled Mish'al, head of its political bureau - have expressed their readiness to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. To Israel's dismay, they have begun to distance themselves from the movement's 1987 charter, which calls for Israel's destruction.
read on...
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/commentators/01-2009/Article-20090102-97eb6fe3-c0a8-10ed-00be-61084e55a0c8/story.html
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