Misplaced conscience is not the path to Mideast peace

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Wednesday, May 19, 2021 | 2 a.m.

Be careful what you plan for …

The tragedy that continues to unfold in the Middle East is not new. It begins with some missed opportunities, gets fueled by some misguided political maneuverings, boils over as a result of miscalculations dependent upon human frailties and conflagrates as the world wonders what happened.

Again.

For those of us who weren’t born yesterday — I am excluding actual babies who were born yesterday, but those adults among us who just act that way don’t get a pass — the desire of some Arabs to push Israelis into the sea to never be heard from again is not a new phenomenon.

What is new is the number of Arab countries that, for whatever reasons, have decided to make peace with Israel, which reduces the potential flashpoints in the region significantly. One place, of course, that has not receded into the history books of bad relations is the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. No, the world is watching in full, horrific color the tragic results of what happens when one side makes a plan that assumes a certain reaction from the other side. But we all know that once the shooting starts the plans often go awry.

And so it goes between Israel on one side and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on the other. And the casualties — the ones most of us can’t stand to watch on our television sets — continue to mount.

It is almost foolish to try to explain all of what went wrong this time to make Hamas believe that it could gain the upper hand over the Fatah faction of the Palestinians by provoking Israel’s retaliation to rocket attacks on the Jewish State’s major population centers.

Using the Palestinian people as fodder in their political wars is not new for Hamas — that’s what it does. Knowing Israel will defend itself with significant force — which means, unfortunately, collateral damage involving innocent children — is what Israel has to do.

So, here we are.

I hope by the time this column is published there will be a cease-fire. Both sides — both miscalculating sides — want and need to stop the killing of innocents.

But that is just the next beginning to this conflict.

I suppose if you take the long view — as if from 1948 to the present isn’t long enough to settle this mess — you could believe that time will sort it all out and peace will reign in that part of the planet. But therein lies the problem.

Multiple generations have come and gone since Israel was declared a state in 1948, and peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has yet to come to pass.

The Oslo Accords in the early 1990s gave the world hope, but it wasn’t enough for the Palestinian leadership. And since the Trump administration abandoned all semblance of square dealing with the Palestinians the past four years, the idea of peace became just another mirage in the desert.

Recently, domestic policy considerations on both sides created a need for some tough talk.

Throw in some domestic political miscalculations, and the idea of a little shooting war made just the slightest (non)sense to some and, of course, that grew quickly out of control.

And now the world waits for President Joe Biden to fix this mess — one he didn’t make and one he would rather not get bogged down with since COVID-19, China, Russia and an economic collapse demand his immediate and full attention. But, as has always been the case, there is no one else but America who can step into the breach.

And that brings me back to the adults who act like they were born yesterday, specifically the Democrat Party of Nevada and all others like them. As if President Biden doesn’t have enough on his plate, they demand he act in a way that is not only foolish and dangerous for all living things in the region, but they do it to salve a pang of conscience they believe only they are entitled to have.

They forget, if ever they had known, that it was a similar outbreak of misplaced conscience that scuttled the first peace plan between the Arabs and Israelis more than 40 years ago. A naive American president (a Democrat) decided to wade into waters with which he was unfamiliar and almost single-handedly put asunder an almost impossible-to-achieve peace that was well on its way to success.

Today it is different. Many Arab countries have and are making peace with Israel, but the same naiveté in some of the Democratic ranks threaten the remaining parties and whatever efforts they can make toward finding a lasting and secure peace. Not to mention the havoc they are creating within the Democratic Party, but that is a column for another day.

As an optimist, I choose to believe that with Israel and many of her Arab neighbors finding a way toward peace, it is just a matter of time before most of the dominoes fall and peace and tranquility survive.

But that may still be a ways off because people are still human and humans make big mistakes. Israel, for example, was on a path toward new leadership and a potential path forward toward peace with the Palestinians.

Hamas miscalculated its way to both a bloody military defeat and, by forcing Israel’s military hand, it probably secured Bibi Netanyahu’s leadership for yet another term.

And that could continue to encourage the right-wing crazies in Israel (yes, they have them too) to force the Palestinians further into a box from which they can’t even see the light.

So much for the best-laid plans. So much for those who know nothing trying to do something. So much for innocent people having to allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder. So much for any thought of the United States withdrawing from leadership.

Our world needs America. America needs to lead. And Americans need to let the grown-ups go to work.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.