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Monday, June 22, 2009

Mission Impossible?

Can President Obama persuade the Jews and Arabs, combatants in Palestine, to ‘kiss’ and make up a quarrel that started when Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian maid, bore Abraham a son, Ishmael. But Isaac, born subsequently to Abraham’s wife, Sarai, was deemed to be Abraham’s real heir and Ishmael was cast out.
The Israelite history in the ‘promised land’ over the centuries was chequered to say the least. That history, in the Old Testament, shows they were victors or vanquished in relation to surrounding kingdoms, as they worshipped, or ignored God. Ever longing for a Messiah, to be successful in war like David, whose kingdom extended from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, they misunderstood the nature of their true Messiah, Jesus.
False messiahs arose and challenged the Roman rule, so that the Romans fulfilled Jesus’ prophesy, destroying the temple and ejecting the Jews, who fled to many countries. Maintaining their separateness as God’s chosen people, they became offside in Russia and Europe.
The Jewish desperation for a separate state, after the Hitler’s ‘final solution’ and its Holocaust, persuaded the UN to allow the Zionists their wish to form the nation of Israel in Palestine. A wise decision?
Some six hundred thousand Palestinians deserted their homes in fear, fleeing to refuge camps around Gaza and in neighbouring states, where Muslim resentment nurtured the new guerrilla war of the suicide bomber. And now the impasse.
Israel, militarily very strong, with American arms, financial support, and by repute, nuclear weapons, cannot be defeated. Nor can they be secure against the Muslim-fed hatred and the fearless antagonism within the Arab nation, the descendants of Ishmael.
Israel, constantly threatened is scared of the threat posed by any rise in Arab power, such as the current threat posed by Pakistan’s nuclear intentions.
Meanwhile, the possibility of a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank, assigned by the UN as Palestinian land, has been ‘scotched’ by orthodox-religious Jewish view the God ‘promised’ it all to Abraham and his descendants. Their many settlements have the tacit approval, and defence, of Israel’s government. This, together with the high separation wall, wandering through the West bank, even separating Palestinian villagers from their farms, and dividing families, effectively renders a separate Palestinian state unviable.
Can Obama, with the best will in the world, succeed in pursuing a separate Palestinian state? Consider the vehement response to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ‘openness’ to a two state solution – the right wing cry: ‘traitor’.
But, consider Netanyahu’s preconditions: the Palestine state ‘must be demilitarised and be unable to control its borders or airspace, and must recognise Israel as a Jewish state,’ (the Age 17/6).
And Arabs resident in Israel can only ever expect to be second-class citizens, without the vote, unless they agree Israel is a Jewish state, because Israel fears an indigenous Arab demographic victory.
Jewish minority power in America virtually ensures that Obama, with the best will in the world, cannot resolve this standoff, which ensures that the ‘war’ of Islam against the Western world could last a very long time.

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