I have long had a pet theory that the only way that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza get any peace will be when they are assimilated into a greater Israeli state. The best they can hope for is Civil Rights, not sovereignty. I'm no geopolitical scholar by any stretch, informed as I am only by news, blogs and Socratic dialog. But one doesn't need to be a scholar to see that the days of Hamas and Hezbollah are numbered.
There's nothing quite so annoying as the drip, drip, drip of civilian body counts in the twos and threes as mad bombers do their dirty desparate deeds. It has long been a staple of NPR's reporting. We know too many details of this morbidity and not where it leads. But if it can raise my anger and disgust half a planet away, I can guarantee you some folks like me over there are at their wit's end. The problem is that only one half of the folks over there have a government worth beans and an army worth fearing. So now we have come to the moment at which the penultimate if not the very last tripwire holding back the full rage of Israel has been snapped.
Right radio is right. Israel nearly went ballistic on itself as it unilaterally uprooted its own citizens and relocated them so that the Palestinians might have more land. What ever went wrong with Land for Peace? The election of Hamas, of course. I had imagined that the malfeasance of a Hamas government would doom the Palestinians within a year. I figured that without international assistance and no economic program, Hamas was doomed to humiliating dependence on Israel. Maybe they figured the same thing, and maybe the only gifts they are ever going to get are those of weapons from profiteers and voyeuristic Islamicists. Maybe they figured to act on that. Fools. Utter fools.
I think it's quite telling that last week the world's attention was focused on a bitter European rivalry. It ended with a headbutt, and there were people from almost every corner willing to suggest that attack was shamefully inexplicable and utterly unforgivable. Now is the time for those phrases dear pundits. Hamas has, in a mere six months, completely ruined the prospects of nationhood for Palestine. With any luck this war will last more than six days and they will truly pay the price.
The difference between Hamas and Hezbollah at this point are irrelevant. They are two heads of the same masochistic beast to whose necks too many innocent Arabs' fate is leashed. They have, like a rabid mongrel, charged at a larger and more deadly dog whom had been sleeping with one eye open. And now this pityable situation is nothing more or less than War. War for keeps, apparently.
We are now clearly in the era in which the dreams of Arab nationalism hang in the balance. The fragile peace once moderated by the late King Hussein of Jordan is now finally over. The operation of such fraternal systems as Hezbollah is now to be put to the ultimate test. Can it survive war? The dominoes are wobbling and the future is bloody. Perhaps this is what it takes to draw out all of the ignorant dreamers of Caliphate into a contest for their lives and ambitions. Were that they were all uniformed nations. No, They will strike and withdraw. They will be purged and then watched. They will reform and restrike and the cycle will begin again. Or maybe Israel has a plan to end that cycle once and for all.
Israel will perservere. They are our strategic ally and thus we will make it so. And it may be that if this conflict escalates, of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, only one nation will remain. I hope it doesn't come to that. But any such organization that can singlehandedly draw its nation into war with its neighbor is the defacto government. And Hamas and Hezbollah are now playing high stakes poker with stolen chips. It's time to play out the entire hand. Their bluff has been called.
Update:
What we're really talking about is people on the other side of the proverbial Rhine River, the barbarians who think that they can inflict enough damage, psychological or otherwise, to tell people who have the good life, we have nothing to lose, you have everything to lose. We're going to aggravate you until you tire and give us concessions. And so the Israelis are put in this unfortunate position of having to retaliate to stop that. And having power and success and expertise, they can inflict a lot more damage than the terrorists can. And now it's just a matter of will, if the Israelis are willing to tell Syria and Lebanon, here is a series of gradations. We will take out your power plant, we will take out your roads, we will take out your airports, and it's up to you to see which level you want to escalate to. If they do that, they can stop it.
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