Once more unto the brink

"Today marks the start of direct negotiations between someone who has no right to represent the Palestinian people and the brutal occupier, to provide a cover for Judaizing Jerusalem and stealing the land," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar

IT IS DEVELOPING INTO A TRADITION for any new American President, dating back to Jimmy Carter’s efforts at Camp David back in the 1970s. Yes, it’s time once more for another failed attempt at resolving the Middle East’s most troublesome of problems - a settlement between Palestinians and Jews.

If it was not so serious the whole business would sound like a Hollywood franchise, with sequel after sequel spanning the decades. How many times have we seen, lined up in front of the Whitehouse Palestinian, Jewish and American leaders, giving hope where in reality there is very little? The one difference this time is that there is less hope than usual.

Today Palestinians are divided between Gaza and the West Bank. Like the old East and West Germany, the Palestinians are living (and evolving) within two different societies. The Gaza strip, which is under the control of Hamas, with its uncompromising hatred of the Jewish state and its retarded economy relying upon outside help for the minimum of sustenance for its people (or so we are being told), and the West Bank whose economy is flourishing by comparison, and whose people are living, for first time, a comparatively well- off existence in many decades.

HAMAS HAS PROMISED to scale-up its attacks on Israel in order to undermine the peace negotiations. The Hamas Godfather in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, is determined upon the destruction of the state of Israel and replace what they see as an occupation by Jews with a fully merged single Palestinian state.

Mahmoud Abbas ,who is the leader of Fata on the West Bank seeks a two state solution to the Middle East crisis, and harbours no Zaharian ambitions for driving out the Jews; quite rightly believing that this is an impossible ambition to achieve, even if he had nurtured, at some time, a sympathy for its ultimate achievement.

Because of this division between the Palestinian people, President Obama’s invitation could not have come at a worse time: for America’s traditional ally, Israel, has prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing difficulties of his own. The cessation of settlement building comes to an end this month, and Netanyahu is under pressure from the Americans to prolong the pause in such settlement building.

If he agrees, he faces internal conflict at home which Hamas would look upon as an opportunity. For if the people of Israel begin fighting among themselves, then the real possibility of a single Palestinian state begins to be believed in – not only in Gaza, but also on the West Bank.

The Americans have to think carefully about how far they wish to push Netanyahu toward an agreement that they must know he cannot take back to his people with any chance of success. It will be a heavy price to pay if they do. A few moments grandstanding on the White House lawn is a silly price to pay for an American President, who by doing so, may have lit the blue touch paper in Israel.

NETANYAHU IS NO FOOL HOWEVER, and I cannot believe he would cause division among his (unruly at the best of times) people. The issue of Jewish settlements and their continuation, should not be part of any bargain that may be reached. If Mahmoud Abbas does what he has threatened to do and walk away from the talks if Israel continues with its settlements policy, then he must do so; and we must wait for another day and another US president, to be rewarded with a workable solution.

This conflict, it seems, like poverty, is always with us. But I believe there will be a solution in the future. As you will have gathered from the above, I, when forced to pick a side, will always be behind the Israeli state. I do so because the fate of the Jewish people have never in the past, when living in the Diaspora, been on a comfortable journey. They have served as the scapegoats of kings and tyrants; they have been victimised for failures of almost every society they found themselves barely tolerated in.

The infamous Russian programs that, when the economy went wrong, the Jews were the chosen ones to be burdened with the blame. The Jewish people have always had to be resourceful people in order to survive: and in every corner of the pre 21^st century world where they have tried to settle, they have faced at one time or another their persecution, culminating in the greatest monstrosity of inhuman behaviour ever enacted – the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the ultimate attempt to rid the planet of the Jew. Some six million were sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis, their hair and gold teeth removed, and their skin turned into lampshades.

NOW, WHO IN THE MODERN WORLD would blame them if they sought out their ancient homelands and once occupied steadfastly defend them? In literature, philosophy and music, Germany was considered exemplarily. But it degenerated into Nazism, whose ideological theme was ridding the world of the Jew.

Israel is where she is today because the Jewish people needed their own sanctuary to retreat to and live and prosper in - this is the state of Israel. It is a homeland that was taken from them and renamed as Palestine by the Romans. Today its historical significance, in terms of its independence, is as important as that of America in the 18^th century, and I hope President Obama realises this.