With Israel’s offensive deepening in the Gaza, and Hamas taunting, ‘bring it on,’ Barack Obama must be trembling in his commemorative Nike Air Force Ones, right about now.
A tired old problem, raging Middle East, awaits the new chief executive officer of the Free World as he prepares to assume the helm with promises of change, which are destined to become a weary refrain unless the lip service is accompanied by a smartly substantial foreign policy adjustment that declares war on terror-mongers.
Once again, the progressive international community has to take time out of its domestic schedule to smile with enemies, shake hands with them and attempt to bring about lasting peace between a pair of warring foes, who are mismatched in their malice and their might.
Stumped, as usual, over how to quell the violence, Free World leaders are wearing out the leather of diplomacy as they pound the pavement of logic and, reluctantly, emerge with the gloomy conclusion that ‘talks’ can no longer halt the growing blood trade of Palestine’s ruling party.
Two years ago, Hamas was, supposedly, elected by Palestinians to change what had become the norm under late PLO chieftain Yasser Arafat. After years of exile, that ‘freedom-fighter’ had blazed into the Gaza Strip on July 1, 1994, promising the tattered people the dawn of a new era. Instead, the terrorist relegated Palestinians to the lowest rung on the global welfare ladder. He fine-tuned his corruption by stashing and squandering vast sums of the Free World’s goodwill and bribe money only to die, disgracefully, a decade later after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as yet another olive branch.
Hamas has simply picked up where Arafat left off, continuing what has become a Palestinian tradition and legacy: not caring about peace in the region — and even less about its own people.
The international community’s relative silence over Israeli’s thundering response to yet another sabotaged cease-fire is an indication that the Free World may be reaching its limit. As evidenced by the fruitless efforts of the 1991 Madrid conference, the 1994 Oslo accords, the 2000 Camp David summit and the 2007 US-sponsored conference in Maryland, intelligent nations are finally beginning to comprehend that talking with terrorists simply emboldens them, and fuels more attacks, everywhere.
Still, people, who have evolved beyond barbarianism, prove that old habits can be hard to snuff out. During an obligatory plod to the Middle East, last week, French President Nicholas Sarkozy visited Damascas to let President Bashar al-Assad know that he is confident the Syrian leader — the very same one, who decorated terrorist and baby-killer Samir Al-Kuntar upon his release from an Israel’s prison last summer —“will throw all his weight to convince everyone to return to reason.” Really?
The sordid time-line has proven that ‘talks,’ and other attempts at mediation in the Middle East, are simply doomed to failure unless Hamas comes to the self-realization that the Free World is sick of grumbling, self-piteous, murderous menaces with much too large of an axe to grind.
E-mail“A Britisher’s View” at BritView@courierlife.net.
