The Never-Ending Story

The Arab-Israeli conflict is likely to go on until after you and your children and your children's children cease to exist. The notion that "cooler heads" could prevail on a conflict lasting several thousand years, based on land rights to the fundamental sites of their respective theologies, is fanciful. Still, it's very distressing that we have what appeared to be a full-scale war over there this week, with kidnappings and air strikes and armed incursions and the arrest of cabinet ministers. The Palestinian Prime Minister is claiming that the Israelis are seeking to destroy the Hamas government, and the Israelis are claiming that Hamas is continuing its goal of elminating a Jewish presence in the region. It's likely that they're both right.

Oddly enough, and this has been completely forgotten by now, the week began with the possibility that a new plan for peace drafted by Fatah and some members of Hamas implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. Whether that is the true belief of the Hamas government is uncertain, and today, irrelevant. This is a war that will continue to rage for centuries unless some true statesman come out of that hellfire to say "Enough is enough." Statesman are a rare commodity in our modern world, however.