Impotence of power: "Outsiders see Israel's raid on Syria as aggression. To Israelis, it was the act of a nation driven half-mad with grief "

This point of view is well worth reading. However, I disagree with some of the points made.

The way I see it, the Israeli's prefer to attack the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese rather than negotiate a settlement, because they don't want to confront Isreali extremists and settlers. They would rather kill arabs than jews is what it comes down to.

If they want to live in peace with the arabs they are going to have to confront their urge to take arab lands. That might mean a civil war in Israel, and naturally they would like to avoid that. So they just try harder to suppress the arabs. But it's not working. They just create more suicide bombers, and escalate their own insecurity. This cycle will have to break. And the honest way to do that is to address the Israeli settlements and occupation, within Israeli society.

Bush's pro Israeli policy will never create peace, because it treats the Palestinians as the problem. That is bass ackwards. The Palestinians are the sacrificial lambs for Israeli governments who avoid dealing with the true causes of their insecurity--the aspirations of some Isreali's to take other people's lands by force and subterfuge.
- posted by geoff @ #