A few weeks ago I made some comments about how the IRA bombings did not make everyone hate the Irish. I must be prescient. There was an op-ed in the NY Times and International Herald Tribune about that same scenario. Ali Abunimah explains how the US Middle East mediator is the former mediator for Ireland's woes, and how differently the situation has been treated by the US. The British wanted to shut out Sinn Fein, the political branch of the IRA, but the US wouldn't do that. However, in Palestine, the US has no trouble shutting out Hamas.
There will never be peace in Palestine/Israel until ALL sides agree upon it. That means everyone: the governments, the terrorists, the army, the extremists on both sides. If the Israeli religious far-right continues to insist upon "colonizing" Palestinian land with illegal settlements, even when their own government says not to, how can you expect the Palestinians to believe anything Israel says? When the US and Israel insist that the Palestinians must give up their arms before peace talks can truly take place, how can you expect them to intentionally leave themselves defenseless when Israel has a well-trained army that could strike at any time, and has in the past?
My opinion: There will never be peace in Palestine/Israel until one side is dead. And it looks like it will probably be the Palestinians who die. There will always be a group of Palestinians who want their land back and want Israel gone. There will always be Israelis who believe that biblically, the entire region belongs to the Jews. Neither of those groups will agree to a lasting peace, and if one is forced upon them, they will still continue to fight, physically, for what they believe. The United States does not understand the situation, and most Americans never will. There will never be peace.
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