Israel Matzav

The sideshow

The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state. But one of the little-told stories of the last four decades has been the steady easing of that state-on-state belligerency.

Jordan effectively quit the fight after Israel's triumph in the 1967 war cut Jordan in half. So too did the Arab states that did not share a border with Israel. The bloody toll of the '73 war then led Egypt and Syria to surrender their ambitious military efforts to drive Israel into the sea.

So, for the last 30 years, Israel's violent difficulties have not been with other Middle East states, but with terrorist groups and movements supposedly representing Palestinian interests based either in the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza or thriving parasitically in the southern part of the ruined state of Lebanon.

Yes, the support for the Palestinians and hatred for Israel is an undeniable feature of political life in the Middle East -- a pan-national, ideological cause. Rabble-rousing on the subject can bring hundreds of thousands into the streets of Arab countries in expressions of rage and hatred.

Yet if there were a Palestinian state today, and Israel had been crammed back into its pre-1967 borders, would this week's street revolt in Cairo look any different?

If there were a Palestinian embassy in Washington today, would Hosni Mubarak have been any more mindful of the eventual consequences of his iron-fisted fecklessness in refusing a transition to a more representative Egypt because there was an ambassador from Palestine in Washington?

Labels: Palestinians

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:30 AM