This is a 4 minute video of an Israeli woman and her call to Obama as she reflects on her life and Palestinian life. A good video, one sided, but all true.
The question remains: what can be done about this miserable conflict! The answer will definitely not come from the Netanyahu government or the Israeli right. Former Israel intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, the man who ran Israel’s Mossad spy agency until January, contends, as reported by Ethan Bronner NYTimes on June 3, that Israel’s top leaders, specifically Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak:
- lack judgment,
- have failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians,
- have put Israel at risk of further international isolation, and
- as the Palestinians campaign for statehood, could make rash decisions such as an airstrike on Iran which would mean regional war, and the regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.
Mr. Dagan, who stepped down after eight years, was appointed by Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister in 2002. Mr. Sharon was reported to have told Mr. Dagan he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Mr. Dagan is widely thought to have complied and is not seen as a soft-hearted liberal.
Mr. Dagan's views are echoed in a different manner by CNN's Fareed Zakaria who on May 29 said, "Prime Minister Netanyahu's references to the indefensible borders of 1967 last week also reveal him to be mired in a world that has really gone away. The chief threat to Israel today is not from a Palestinian army. Israel has the region's strongest economy and military by far, complete with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The chief threats to Israel are from new technologies - rockets and biological weapons - and from demography. Its physical existence is less in doubt than its democratic existence as it continues to rule millions of Palestinians who are entitled to neither a vote nor a country."
On the positive side, hope remains that democracy and reason will win out in Israel, tearing down the ultra-dangerous status quo, putting in office leaders worthy of the state of Israel, leaders who can make history and not who put up obstacles and spread confusion. As Zakaria writes on May 25 in the Washington Post, "But one day there will be peace, along the lines that people have talked about for 20 years. And Netanyahu will be remembered only as a person before the person who made peace, a comma in history." Israel must produce a leader who will proceed to lay the groundwork for the establishment of two states, a secure Jewish state and a viable Palestine state, two states living in peace and collaboration side by side.
Hussein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGm-gxmxHw
© Dr Hussein A Amin 2011
