Why keep letting Israel sabotage the world's efforts to make peace?

[voltaxebec]

Why keep letting Israel sabotage the world's efforts to make peace?

It did not take long for Israel's government to extinguish the latest bit of hope that it might adopt a reasonable stance as efforts continue to revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Not content to keep making war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, to constantly undermine the credibility of a would-be partner in President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction and to erode good will by haggling over procedural details, the Jewish state has taken the boldest step yet toward making the November peace conference in America a failed one: It has confiscated yet more land near Occupied Jerusalem, evaporating the optimism created by a senior official's hint that the holy city might be shared.

There was nothing new in this act of diplomatic vandalism, nor in the chutzpah of an accompanying statement by the Israeli Army to the effect that the land grab was carried out "in order to improve the quality of life for Palestinians." Deliberate provocations - especially at precarious moments - have always been an integral part of Israeli policy. Is it too much to ask, though, that the international community finally speak out against the deliberate undermining of its goals in the Middle East? Few governments have hesitated to condemn acts of violence by Palestinian militants, especially when these have apparently been timed to obstruct the peace process. So why is Israel never subjected to the same degree of opprobrium when it openly violates both the spirit and the letter of international law, as well as its own commitments, at similarly delicate stages?

Instead, the Jewish state is handsomely rewarded for its ostentatious trampling of dozens of United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, its serial violations of the Geneva Conventions, its flagrant breaking of promises under the so-called "road map" to peace, its refusal to either sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or accept neutral inspections of its atomic sites, and its pursuit of apartheid-style goals. Acts that result in sanctions and/or military action against other nations draw only mild rebukes from Europe and boatloads of advanced weaponry from America.

It is not hard to see why it is that when Arabs and Muslims get a chance to vote, parties advocating confrontation with Israel do so well. Nor is it difficult to understand why those who preach holy war against Israel's most important accomplice, the United States, find it so easy to recruit. The real mystery is why successive US governments have unabashedly subjugated the interests and safety of their own people - and, indeed, those of Israelis - to the designs of a few fanatics in both countries. Once upon a time, the Cold War made it fashionable to describe Israel as a "democracy" that deserved protection. That excuse was flimsy at the time; today it is preposterous - and insulting.

[Ognir]

Good find Paddy