Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Busy Week Leaves Gaza Unchanged
The last few days have seen a great many developments in the War in Gaza. On the plus side, the parties have agreed to partial ceasefires to allow humanitarian aid workers to administer polio vaccines to the kids in Gaza after the region had its first case in a quarter of a century. On the other side of the ledger, the IDF freed six corpses that had been living hostages a few days earlier. The outrage over the failure to free all the hostages then resulted in a general strike in Israel today. The Israeli Supreme Court ordered the strikers back to work, and it looks like that will hold. Yet there is no ceasefire prospects.
Polio does not care who rules Gaza. It will spread if it can. The border with Israel does not apply to the disease. There a just enough vaccine-resistant religious fools for this to be a threat to all sides. The Netanyahu government did not agree to this because of concern for the kids it has been dropping bombs on for the last ten months. The cabinet agreed to it because failing to deal with the outbreak could hurt Israeli kids.
The deaths of the six hostages is definitely the fault of Hamas. They kidnapped these people, and they killed them with bullets to the brains. The Israelis maintain that there are about 100 hostages left, of whom up to 35 may be dead. Hamas is running out of bargaining counters, and as it does so, one will expect them to become more intransigent as a result. They will give away less because they have less to give.
The protests in Israel are entirely the fault of the government. The war aims of the Israeli people put the return of the hostages alive at the top of their list of priorities. Mr. Netanyahu has as his top priority keeping the war going to he does not have to face the criminal charges that await him in the courts. So long as he is PM, he is immune from prosecution. It got so bad this morning that Joe "I Love Israel" Biden said to the press that Mr. Netanyahu has not done enough to free them.
The general strike was the most promising avenue to peace as it put serious pressure on the government. However, such a strike would take more than a day or two to really have the kind of effect one would like to see. The Supreme Court has opted to keep the war going. They can dress it up in all the legalese they like, but the effect is to keep people dying.
Meanwhile, the US government in collaboration with Qatar and Egypt is crafting a new proposal on a "take it or leave it" basis. They have all signaled that if this does not take, they are done trying to broker peace. Since the minorities that govern Israel and Gaza are against peace for their own reasons, this proposal will be left.
Peace can only come if the people of Israel and the people of Gaza have leaders who want to stop the killing. In the case of Gaza, that means a general uprising against the Hamas vampires. One can see no other way. In the middle of a war, it is highly unlikely that any weapons that fall into the hands of non-Hamas Gazans would be used against anyone other than IDF troops. It could happen, but it is more likely that someone within Hamas mounts a coup against the current warmongers. One does not see the conditions necessary for that either.
A sensible government in Israel cannot happen until before the next constitutionally required general election by October 2026. Otherwise, it would mean a far-right party in the government leaves triggering a vote of no confidence that Mr. Netanyahu loses. If this journal knows that, so does the PM. He will appease those voices to the last hostage and then some. He will make the argument that changing leaders in the middle of a war is a bad idea.
Almost exactly 85 years ago, World War II began in Europe and Britain had Neville Chamberlain as PM. May 1940, the PM was Winston Churchill. Changing leaders can work.
© Copyright 2024 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
|
|
|
