Jeremy Bowen from his journal in the BBC today:
Quote:
I have never liked comparisons between Northern Ireland and the conflict here. Apart from the fact that they are not always helpful, writing and broadcasting about the Middle East is a good enough way to make enemies. I don't need another set.
But think about this. For many years Britain faced an insurgency and at times a low-level civil war in Northern Ireland. Those sorts of terms weren't used all that much but that's what it was.
At different times the IRA planted bombs on the British mainland that killed people and did a lot of damage. The actions of the British security forces during three decades of the Troubles were very controversial, and still are today. Sometimes the British army killed innocent people.
But Britain never used heavy weapons, fast jets, air strikes and attack helicopters. Tracked armoured vehicles were very rarely seen.
And it has emerged that there were many secret contacts over the years with the paramilitaries. In the end, there were years of negotiations. Prisoners who were serving long sentences were released as part of the price of peace, even, in the phrase used in this part of the world, if they had "blood on their hands".
There is no doubt about the extreme suffering that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza to protect, in its view, its own citizens. It is deepening the hatred for Israel that many people in Gaza felt anyway.
Israel has used what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calls the iron fist many times before. And its citizens still feel insecure.
Will they feel any different when this latest episode is over?
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I think that what he begins to say at the end is key (or
a key, at any rate): What is the point of Israel, as a project and a society, if it never is allowed to become a normal state? If its citizens continue to live in dread and know only war? Some have a messianic belief that it has always, and will always be this way for 'The Jews' as a historic people. I don't share that belief, and it is not borne out by the history of the region, in which major strife between Jewish and non-Jewish populations is a twentieth century phenomenon. And if we then properly treat this as a political issue - not a messianic one - it's clear that this war isn't taking us anywhere good, isn't bringing us closer to peace. The only possible way that the present Gaza war might lead us to long-term peace is if Israelis really and truly believe they can
break the Palestinians as a people, to completely and totally destroy their national will, to disperse them beyond repair. To do that would be abhorrent, I think, to Israelis' sense of their own morality (to say nothing of the world). To pursue this war and do any less than that, however, will simply deepen wounds, entrench hard-liners, and inflict an appalling human cost. Where is the endgame, here? Even in a best-case scenario for Israel, if Hamas utterly collapses, do they believe that whatever power structure takes its place will make lesser demands on the Israeli military/security apparatus, or make lesser demands for a contiguous and viable state? Do they believe they can empower Fatah by doing this, or are they tying its hands?