Remember the old cliché of a pessimist seeing a glass half empty rather than half full? I’m a pessimist by nature, always imagining the downside of something, except when it comes to women. (In their case the downside reveals itself after a while, but the start is always brilliant.) I suppose my pessimism derives from childhood, when dreams never became reality due to a strict nanny and even stricter parents. Or so a shrink might say, although I’ve never been to one, and many of those who have been and whom I have met rarely made any sense.
This preamble on pessimism has to do with the Middle East—Gaza, to be precise. Although it deeply saddens me to write it, it seems to me that I have more chance to run off with Lily James than for peace to hold over that tortured piece of real estate. In fact, it is far more realistic for a lasting peace in Ukraine than a permanent end to the hostilities in Gaza. There are two main obstacles to peace: Hamas and Netanyahu. It is as simple as that.
“Hamas is as likely to voluntarily disarm as Bibi is to become Catholic.”
Conducting summary executions the day after resuming control of Gaza proves that Hamas has learned nothing from this unspeakable tragedy. Sixty-eight thousand dead from Israeli arms, half of them innocent women and children, and all Hamas can think of is to add on to this morbid number. Persuading Hamas to disarm is a key to The Donald’s twenty-point peace plan, but Hamas is as likely to voluntarily disarm as Bibi is to become Catholic.
And let us not forget Netanyahu and his fellow gangsters like Smotrich and Katz. They are the very ones who helped finance Hamas before Oct. 23 in order to keep the Palestinian Authority weak and the West Bank divided. Hamas saved Netanyahu two years ago, and he’s not about to get rid of them, because they come in handy where domestic Israeli politics are concerned.
The horror deal between two very evil parties began in 1996. Following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist, Hamas and Netanyahu worked hand in hand in defeating the Oslo agreements, and then Bibi facilitated Qatar’s hundreds of millions of dollars in paper bills to Hamas, a fact that weakened the Palestinian Authority to no end. Netanyahu and Hamas still need each other, and I am afraid they will do their utmost to subvert any peace agreement. Gaza, needless to say, cannot be reconstructed overnight. There were 654 Israeli strikes on Gaza’s medical facilities alone. The area has been ground into rubble, making peace over such devastation almost impossible. Netanyahu knew what he was doing by waging total war. He was making peace untenable. Netanyahu’s plan now is to keep the Palestinian Authority from leading a united front with Gaza.
Israel’s creeping takeover of the West Bank has been decades in the making. Seven hundred and forty thousand so-called settlers are now entrenched on Palestinian lands. Last time I was there, during the Yom Kippur War, there were 10,000. Israel has been very smart in its land grab. It has made a two-state solution impossible by an impracticable contiguous Palestinian territory. Land grab aside, a Palestinian state cannot be created unilaterally without the agreement of Israel, and as long as Netanyahu rules, there will be no state of Palestine.
Gaza, of course, is the great tragedy, with displaced families having been bombed in their tents, their shoeless orphan children lying dead next to their parents’ graves. And it gets worse, as far as the prospects of peace are concerned. Close to 11,000 Palestinians are still locked up in Israeli prisons, a third of them without charges or a trial. At least 77 detainees have died in custody over the past two years. Since 1967, when Israel took over the West Bank through force of arms, more than one million Palestinians have been arrested. International condemnation that brought about change in South Africa has not been heard where Palestine is concerned. What I’d like to know is where the international outrage, let alone the diplomatic censure, has been. Is there one rule for rogue countries and another one for Israel?
Israel’s extremist security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has been accused of having deprived prisoners of food and inflicting physical torture. I am not in a position to know whether these charges are true or not, but I do know that they have not been investigated by human rights groups. The other thing I know is that the Trump people are busy sucking up to the Israelis and totally ignoring the plight of the Palestinians. The latter, I need to remind the world, are also people.
This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.
Taki is an ex-Greek Davis Cup player as well as a former captain of the Greek national karate team. He has won the U.S. national veterans judo championship twice, and in 2008 was world veterans judo champion 70 and over. Since 1967, when he began his career with National Review, he has been a columnist for the London Spectator, the London Sunday Times, Esquire Magazine, Vanity Fair and Chronicles Magazine. In 2002 he founded The American Conservative with Pat Buchanan. He has covered the Vietnam War as well as the Yom Kippur War and the Cyprus conflict of 1974.
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