You know, the plain fact is, we can afford to piss off Israel ... up to a point. (That point being where they take their intelligence data and go home in a huff.) They are considerably less able to cheese us off, which means that we can generally afford to ignore most of their huffier pronouncements. (Rather, we can afford the luxury of not responding to them. Ignoring them altogether would be unwise.) But you do wonder why they're so upset at being asked to stand on the sidelines for the moment. They are not, in fact, being attacked by the terrorist organization we're after, at least not at the moment. They know perfectly well that their mere presence in the coalition in any form would be enough to make it dissolve, and they know perfectly well that the Arab countries are more necessary for this than they are. (Which may be the real rub.) We didn't block Syria from a spot on the UN Security Council because nobody else wanted the seat -- and who can blame them at this moment in time? Israel is also perfectly well aware -- although they try to ignore the fact -- that some sort of Palestinian state is ultimately going to be required if they are ever to have anything resembling peace. (Mind, I sometimes think that real peace is impossible in that particular patch of land. After all, they've been going at each other through most of recorded history; why should the present be any different?) Israel also refuses to recognize that in order to have peace, at some point, they will be forced to negotiate with terrorist organizations that have killed Israelis. There's no point in making peace with Arafat -- by some measures now leading the weakest of the Palestinian factions and a weak leader regardless -- and having Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad pounding away at you even more.
It's also very clear that at the moment, many of the Israeli people don't want peace; they seem to want all the Palestinians (or at least the ones around them) to die.
And now Sharon is about to be severely distracted. (What is it with countries putting their sitting leaders on trial lately? For that matter, why are so many of them misbehaving -- or getting caught doing it, which isn't entirely the same thing. First Clinton, then Chirac and now Sharon. It's a weird little Western meme going around.) It will be interesting -- in one of those Chinese curse ways -- to see how his government functions with him involved in such things. Logically, under a Parliamentary system, it should lead to an immediate "no confidence" vote in the government, pushing him out of office and leading to new elections, but these aren't remotely normal times -- yet -- and they may not be willing to do that in the current world situation.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!