Washington and Jerusalem: Forces Beyond their Control (La Stampa, Italy)
"Of all the wars we don't know how to settle, none will so scandalize future generations like the one that has been raging between Israel and the Arabs since 1948. Because after hasty Nobel Peace Prizes for the martyr Rabin, Arafat and Obama, after all the conferences, demonstrations, and an abundance of tomes, the old commonsensical fairy tale of 'two peoples, two states' always wins the applause of the well-intentioned, and earns good grades for university degree thesis, but on the ground, in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, it is an impossible equation."
Throughout
last weekend, broadsheet editorials were explaining to our grandparents how
easily the First World War could have been avoided a century ago.
If
only the Kaiser had been less of a militarist, the emperor less decrepit,
democracies less greedy, and the nationalists less sectarian. It's a shame that
we, in 2014, are incapable of bringing an end to the conflicts in Libya -
Tripoli Airport is aflame and the U.S. Embassy is being evacuated, in Egypt -
where only repression, even of Al-Jazeera journalists, allows the regime to
govern, in Syria, with 170,000 dead and millions of refugees, in Iraq, with the
militias of ISIS occupying cities while Kurdish Peshmerga
fighters arm themselves in the North, not to mention the Russia-Ukraine
border and the flying coffin that was flight MH17, Gaza, Hamas and Israel.
The resolution
of distant wars, the yellowed pages of books, black and white films, and
sepia-colored daguerreotypes of sad fallen soldiers are a war game for
academics. Getting Putin to withdraw, suppressing the tribal conflict in Libya,
and stopping the Sunni/Shiite jihad in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, is a
much more difficult task. It is wrong to mock our grandparents, because our
grandchildren will mock us. Of all the wars we don't know how to settle, none
will so scandalize future generations like the one that has been raging between
Israel and the Arabs since 1948. Because after hasty Nobel Peace Prizes for the
martyr Rabin, Arafat, and Obama, after
all the conferences, demonstrations, and an abundance of tomes, the old
commonsensical fairy tale of "two peoples, two states" always wins
the applause of the well-intentioned, and earns good grades for university
degree thesis, but on the ground, in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, it is
an impossible equation.
At
the beginning of his adventure in the White House, the cerebral President
Barack Obama hoped not being unilateral like George W. Bush, and speaking
open-heartedly at Cairo University, would be enough to bring an end to Arab
suspicion. Six years later, he recognizes that he hasn't opened a breach in the
walls of the Muslim community, he has very bad relations with Egypt, he has
lost contact with Libya, and he hasn't bent Assad in Syria, which would have
been possible if he hadn't hesitated, leaving Iraq in the hands of a
fundamentalist menace. Even with Israel, a historic U.S. ally, relations are
bad, and 85 percent of Israelis approve of the raids against Hamas by the willful
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The personalities of the two leaders, a
former Harvard Law Professor, Barack, versus ex-Israeli Special Forces commando
or SayeretMatkal, Bibi, are opposites.
The two detest one another, but those who think Washington and Jerusalem don't
understand each other is naive, like strategists who end the First World War on
their iPads.
To
understand what's happening in the immense arc from North Africa to Donetsk,
passing through Gaza and reaching Southeast Asia (which China wants under its
influence), you must depart from the point that most eludes diplomats and
analysts, stuck as they are in the status quo of the 20th century. The world is
leaderless, the bipolar balance of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War ended with the
Berlin Wall, and the ephemeral New World Order of U.S.-led globalization ushered in by the
ever-underestimated Bush Sr. was stopped in its tracks on September 11, 2001.
The frost between the White House and Netanyahu is not the fault of ultra-cool
President Obama. On the contrary, Obama was elected because the majority of
Americans do not believe that, with the economic crisis and the middle class
losing status and jobs due to industrial automation, the U.S. should be
policeman to the planet. There was a time when AIPAC,
the pressure group linked to Israel, was the most powerful lobby in Washington.
Now it is one among many. In the U.S. media, online and on talk shows, the
pro-Palestine version gets as much coverage as the Israeli one receives, so it
is no longer scandalous to evoke the "Jewish lobby." Obama knows that
he has neither the strategy, nor the diplomacy, nor the public consensus, to
impose peace or a truce on Gaza. Netanyahu knows that Israel has worse troubles
than the sulking of the benevolent, and isolated, Secretary of State John
Kerry. Meanwhile the U.N., blocked by China and Putin, is somewhat reminiscent
of a Rotary Club and its long-winded debates, as Europe waits until after the
August bank holiday to parcel out its appointments - and then intervene.
In
the Middle East, the game is turned on its head compared with a generation ago.
The duel between Hamas rockets and the IDF's
"Iron Dome," both of which then engage in psychological warfare on Twitter,
is political rather than military. As a silent ally of Netanyahu, Egypt under
al-Sisi is happy to see the tunnels of the hated
Hamas destroyed. Iran is fighting the Sunni-Shiite civil war.
Turkey and Qatar, which are the ambassadors for Hamas, condemn Israel, knowing
that the battle will end only when Netanyahu and Hamas have achieved their
objectives: for the former, to show the Islamists that they also can be
"tough," and for Jerusalem, to obtain a season of respite.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
We
will have a new American president and a new Israeli prime minister, but the
world will still have a long search - at least a generation - for a new leader,
a stable balance of power, a "Pax Global."
In the meantime, the pyramid of innocent dead will continue to grow,
indifferent to the vulgar din of propaganda competing over their offended
memories.
