The Deadly Deadlock: Israel & Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a case of a very ugly deadlock situation… a really ugly one. Example? Hamas says it won’t recognize Israel until Israel releases the thousands of innocent Palestinians in Israeli jails and Israel withdraws from the 1967 territories. Israel won’t release Palestinian prisoners until Hamas denounces violence and recognizes Israel. More examples? Na, I’ll leave that to you.
So… who’s going to comply first? Israel or Palestine? So far, no one it seems… Hence the deadly deadlock. Sigh! We need a new pair of Sadat and Begin. Actually, we need like 10 more pairs of Sadat and Begin! Oh well. Until then, the deadly deadlock will continue. 
(PS: The title of this post is copyrighted. If you’re gonna use it, you first have to pay me 1 million American dollars. The Deadly Deadlock. Nice ey? 
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The thing is, Sadat was assassinated. I think that makes you “Deadly Deadlock (c)” a bit more deadlier.
LOL
Also, remember Rabin.I have a strong feeling things might have gone very differently had he not been assassinated 11 years ago:(
So, what happens next? Do you think Abbas will call for a referendum on early elections?
Did some of you have seen the recent movie “O Jerusalem” ??
That is a great title, Drima.
It is a deadlock. I think, at this point, the Arabs can break it before the Israelis do.
The first thing to look at is this: What is the Worst Case, the Nightmare Scenario, each side fears?
The second thing to look at is this: What does a realistic, positive outcome look like? (You might argue that there are NO realistic positive outcomes. But that to me is self-defeating.) A genuine Positive Outcome must be envisioned. It must be seen, before it can be achieved.
Part of the problem is that a great many Arabs (again, we have the example of Anony) hold out Death to Israel! as a realistic positive outcome. Such people have no idea what such an outcome might actually look like if it came to pass.
It would not be pretty. What does “Death to Israel” actually mean? What if, for example, Egypt turned away from it’s peace treaty and threatened to destroy Israel? What if Israel, pushed to the limit of desperation, decided that its best hope of survival lay in eliminating Egypt once and for all? Here’s a Nightmare I know a bit too much about: the Egyptian government has kept absolutely silent on a state secret- a German engineering study exploring what would happen if a nuclear weapon destroyed the Aswan Dam. The Egyptian government locked this one up and will never talk about it: a week after the blast, the wall of water finally gets to the Mediterranean Sea. In between the Nile Delta and the dam, nothing is left. Millions of Egyptians have escaped to higher ground in the desert, but most of their nation is destroyed, there is no food or water for them, and not enough transport aircraft in the world to get it too them. They have only traded quick deaths for slow ones.
Tens of millions dead, a nation devastated. Would it be worth it, to Anony? Or do people like that think that just in time, Allah comes down from heaven and saves the day?
Let us assume, then, that a genuine Positive Outcome is one that avoids a final war, that anyone predicting some great and easy victory over the enemy just has no idea how horrible that would be. No winners there, only survivors.
So, then, the remaining set of Positive Outcomes must feature- drum roll please- the continued survival of Israel. There is the hitch. Not enough beleive this. There must be a realization: When the long night is over, and the sun at last rises, Israel will be there.
The Palestinian leaders do not have the power to simply make people accept this. But, they could try, and various powers within the Mislim world can push in that direction. Over time, the situation could change. And THAT is what is needed to end the deadlock. Merely hinting about ceasefires and a possibility of a long term peace is not enough- would you let go of the Tiger if the Tiger promised “if you let me go, I might consider possibly not killing you right now”?
A big part of the problem now, is that the “various powers” noted above gain from the war, and have no reason to see it actually end. The Palestinian-Israeli war serves the purposes of many governments.
It will change, in time. Already, several governments in the region, Pakistan and Qatar among them, have realized that the hatred generated by this war focus is not a good thing, and they want a way out. They want the Positive Outcome. And that is a start.
Ben
Very nicely said Ben =)