Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

War and piz
za?

Today's Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-yet-another-betrayal-of-the-palestinians-9290402.html

Dead in the water. Just as the entire world predicted – with the exception of Messrs Barack Obama and John Kerry and, I suppose, our favourite “peace” envoy Tony Blair – the whole fandango of an Israeli-Palestinian “peace” has collapsed again. US President Obama, walking away from the car crash for which his own political cowardice is entirely to blame, says it’s time for a “pause”. Could there be a more chilling word for America’s impotence in the Middle East?

Of course – lock-stepping with Israel as usual – Obama condemned Mahmoud Abbas for the “unhelpful” step of trying to form a unity government with Hamas, a skewed version of events that entirely chimes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s predictable claim that the Palestinian President “formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organisation that calls for Israel’s destruction”.

Forget that Mr Abbas insists that this Palestinian unity would be founded on recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous agreements.

Since Mr Netanyahu has been demanding that Mr Abbas accept – even before the latter’s renewed love affair with Hamas – that Israel was a “Jewish state” (thus deleting its tens of thousands of Israeli Arab citizens), no “recognition of Israel” without its Jewish definition would be of any use to him.

For years, the Israelis have been telling the world that there was no Palestinian to negotiate with – because Mr Abbas did not represent the Palestinians of Gaza. But the moment Mr Abbas and the Palestinian Authority try to bring about the unity which would produce Israel’s negotiating partner, Mr Netanyahu announces that the “peace” – and let’s forget the “two-state solution” – is nixed.

How on earth did Mr Kerry think that he could bring this nonsense off in nine months? For as long as the US administration remains in hock to the Israeli government and continues to support Israel, right or wrong, it can never – and will never – negotiate peace between the two.

Only a month ago, Israel approved the construction of yet another 186 houses in the newly colonised Jewish areas of East Jerusalem. And colonisation is what it has all been about. How could Israel demand peace with Palestine while continuing to gobble up Arab land in the West Bank? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world’s last colonial war. Deny this and you cannot even start talking.

Mr Netanyahu would have done better to condemn the utterly undemocratic nature of the Palestinian Authority, its suppression of dissent – though this suppression in the West Bank is essential to prevent Palestinians from opposing the “peace process” – and Mr Abbas’s own totally illegal and undemocratic presidency. But Mr Abbas was supposed to be “our” man, the guy whom Mr Obama and Mr Kerry and the Beloved Tony could talk to, so there was no way in which Israel could trash the old man.

The writing was on the wall – and let us remember that this cliché comes from the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast in which he was “weighed in the balance and found wanting” – from the very moment that the fey and luckless Mr Kerry told us all three weeks ago that the US administration was going to “re-evaluate” its role in Israeli-Palestinian talks.

It was time, he said then, for “a reality check”. Had this hopeless US Secretary of State not grasped that it should have been taken before his ridiculous promise last year that all would be solved by the end of this month?

Even the more inappropriate clichés have acquired their own cemetery characteristics. Originally, the “peace process” – which was rarely about peace and never a process – had to be put “back on track” each time it collapsed. Then the Quartet and the Beloved Blair supported a “road map” for peace – which presumably meant we were now driving towards peace rather than taking the train. But now we are encouraged to believe that peace is locked inside a room – from which it is necessary to escape through a door.

Hence Mr Obama obligingly told the world yesterday that “realistically, there is one door and that is [sic] the two parties getting together to make some very difficult compromises. We will encourage them to walk through that door.”

But then, in his next breath – speaking in South Korea – he announced that he did not “expect they will walk through that door, next week, next month or even in the course of the next six months…”

In other words, zilch. The premature winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for Public Speaking has thrown in the towel. It will be up to the next US president – perhaps La Clinton, with all her expertise at Middle East “peace-making”, will be imposed on the poor old Israelis and Palestinians – to open the door, put the train back on track, drive the car down the road map or whatever other infantile expression is invented. But there’s no Cuban cigar for guessing where all this went wrong.

From the start, Mr Arafat agreed that his land would exist only in 22 per cent of Mandate Palestine. Fair enough. But then he accepted the growing Jewish colonies on the West Bank, allowed America to dictate the terms for peace – which were supposed to prevent any such territorial expansion after the Oslo agreement – and then permitted the US to blame him for the failure of negotiations. Hamas, with their dodgy relations with Syria, and then Qatar and Iran and Egypt (under Mr Morsi) and anyone else who could fund their corrupt institution, handed Israel a gift by bombarding Sderot from Gaza with thousands of inaccurate rockets, most of them home-made.

It allowed Israel to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians as it sought revenge, and deprived the Israeli left (that which still existed) of their support for the original Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; a withdrawal which Ariel Sharon’s own right-hand man admitted was intended to allow Jewish colony expansion on the West Bank.

“It’s up to them,” President Obama said on Friday, throwing in the towel. So an all-powerful Israel and a partially occupied Palestine have to make their “compromises” while Washington says – in Mr Obama’s words – it “will never give up our hope or our commitment for the possibilities [sic] of peace”. By which time, of course, “Palestine” will be as dead as the “peace process”.

well hays, having read the book i commended to you, my view has not really changed
it looks pretty clear that neither side is really at all interested in a peaceful solution, or even working towards one with anything meaningful on the table, so by and large i'm happy enough to leave the poxy zealots and loonies from both camps to just kick the shit out of each other


let's just hope the "outsiders" don't get too involved, though i'm afraid that's a bit of a vain hope

Manuel,

The "outsiders" are involved!

Is it the leaderships that are failing the people, or the the people failing the leadership.

It would be interesting to see further "discussions" taking place in the cemeteries of Northern France, a little town called Oradour-sur-Glane, or Auschwitz.

Perhaps, it might remind some of the true wages of war.

no real link between the first part and the last

not sure how the palestinian side "works", but israel and that includes its population, have allowed successive gov'ts to adopt an hard-line expansionist programme .... this is hardly helped by the myriad of tweensy parties who hold the odd seat, and of course the strong ultra-orthodox zealot-led group

live by the sword and die by the sword seems apposite for both sides

Manuel,

"live by the sword and die by the sword seems apposite for both sides"

This would be suggestive to me of the nihilistic philosophy that both you and the Hazy One hold to.

C'est ta vie!

so what's your brilliant solution then?

Send you and Hazy One as hostages.

One to each side.

Or as there are more sides, perhaps, parcelled up as a piece for each faction!

==========

ah yes, a brilliant and useful and sensible suggestion; just as one would expect

if you feel a little squeamish about "live by the sword and die by the sword", how about a simple "plague on both your houses"?

With your obvious magnificent intellect you have no need of printable suggestions.

a typical non-answer from fred who has never yet answered a question
that was why I re-christened him fossy, for it is most apposite (to use this week's word)

Manuel.

Stop whining on!

I know you are suffering from increasing memory loss, which is sometimes a convenience for you, but you can read back to what I have previously posted!

===========

But, as one vulture said to another at a road kill.

"What a mess"!

The other replied : "Yes, but it is a meal to me".

(Look at who is gaining from maintaining the present political situation between Israel and Palestine.)

quite so ...... there' an awful lot of outsiders who are only too happy to ensure that unrest in the region continues
nevertheless, the general public from both sides are apathetic at best about finding peace, so the bloodshed will continue
at least a plague on both houses would be non-discriminatory, and if sufficiently virulent, would be singularly effective

It would depend of the susceptibility and reasons for the susceptibilities of the groups concerned!

sewer-rat fleas are said to be excellent carriers of a myriad of truly nasty diseases

Kerry is a bit late. It happened quite a time ago

https://news.yahoo.com/kerry-warns-israeli-apartheid-231200692--politics.html

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.

Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term "apartheid" in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to Jewish State. Kerry's use of the loaded term is already rankling Jewish leaders in America—and almost certain to Israeli leaders abroad.

It wasn't the only controversial comment on the Middle East that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed out against Israeli settlement-building. And Kerry said that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share the blame for the current impasse in the talks.

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”

According to the 1998 Rome Statute, the “crime of apartheid” is defined as “inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The term is most often used in reference to the system of racial segregation and oppression that governed South Africa from 1948 until 1994.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/In-Israel-idea-of-annexing-parts-of-West-Bank-gains-steam-after-Hamas-Fatah-pact-350587

In Israel, idea of annexing parts of West Bank gains steam after Hamas-Fatah pact

Gilad Erdan became the highest-ranking member of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud faction to call for annexing Area C.

http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.588272

Kerry was wrong: In Israel, there may never be apartheid. In the West Bank, it’s already here
By Peter Beinart

There’s an easy way to defend John Kerry’s recent claim that if Israel doesn’t achieve “a two-state solution,” it could become “an apartheid state.” Just note that several Israeli leaders and establishment American Jews have said the same thing. In 2010, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared, “if this bloc of millions of Palestinians [permanently] cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state” Tzipi Livni, Jeffrey Goldberg, and the late Edgar Bronfman have said all used the “A word” as well.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a unity government on Monday after overcoming a last-minute dispute with Hamas.
unity government 1 OF 6
REUTERS

Palestinian Prime Minister Hamdallah and Palestinian President Abbas pose for a group photo with Palestinian ministers during a swearing-in ceremony of the unity government, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Ministers in the new administration, whom Abbas has said would be politically unaffiliated, took the oath of office in a televised ceremony in Ramallah.

The swearing in of the unity government appeared to mark a significant step in repairing ties between the rival Palestinian factions which have been at odds since 2007 when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah.

Netanyahu calls emergency cabinet meeting ahead of formal PA-Hamas announcement

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called an emergency cabinet meeting Sunday night ahead of the Palestinian Authority-Hamas formal unity government declaration. The announcement is expected to come on Monday at 1 p.m.

During the cabinet meeting, the ministers agreed to completely halt negotiations with the Palestinian Authority as long as it remains united with terror organization Hamas and to lower the amount of money transferred to the PA.

Abbas promised Kerry that the new unity government would recognize Israel and renounce violence. Hamas has not made that pledge and is still committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.