27 January 2011

Another comment on the Middle East

An article in the Guardian by Seamus Milne about the Palestine situation after the recent leaks ended on a miserable capitulatory note.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/26/authentic-leaders-middle-east-peace
I wrote the following comment:

Milne details one humiliation and betrayal after another, and the violence from Israel's and the PS's side accompanying these acts of brutal oppression. He makes it clear without saying as much that the whole setup involves the National Question to a very high degree. Good reasons for war and regime change - "at the very least".
But the usual litany of "democratic overhaul", representation and respectable unity is then churned out as a solution for "anyone who cares for the Palestinian cause", with the usual pre-emptive weeping and wailing. The only sane reason for such an argument I can think of is to avoid being smashed to pieces and final-solutioned by the Israelis. In which case the choice offered seems to be between the peace of a real graveyard and the peace of a virtual graveyard.
Real sanity will not accept such a choice.
JFK once said (mirabile dictu) that "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." His words ring truer than ever today in the Middle East and the Maghreb, and make Milne's whining Jeremiad into an utterly useless piece of writing "for those who care about the Palestinian cause".

This was deleted by a moderator, so I posted this instead:

Hm... deleted for being too inflammatory no doubt.
So let's just say that there isn't the slightest possibility of any "peaceful" solution in Palestine (or indeed the Middle East in general) and that any claim that there is a pure illusion.
Palestine (especially Gaza) is both a real and a virtual graveyard. Rousseau said that "peace" under the wrong conditions just meant the peace of the graveyard. This kind of "peace" might be imposed temporarily, but (as events in Tunisia etc and many other places at many other times show) it won't last.
JFK once stated the obvious:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."
This is what we're witnessing on an escalating scale in the world today. Palestine is no exception.

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