I'm not going to say a lot about Gaza. I want though to point at a rather good article by Steven Klein When and how will Israel end Gaza operation? (הארץ). There are two things worthy of praise here: a refreshing pragmatism instead of the usual moral windbagging and a proposal for short term measures by which Israel can address the situation. These also tend to be lacking in favour of the usual recitals of long term solutions about which there is wide consensus.
His proposal is not without its faults. What he is proposing is a (probably illegal) collective punishment of Gaza. But I think it takes a certain amount of doublethink to imagine that collective punishment is not a motive in what Israel is currently doing. At least this proposal stands to be a measured form of it with some rationale and direction.
The main deficiency though, is that it would require a level of political maturity and cohesion that Israel simply does not possess. I don't think it is controversial to state that the Knesset is dysfunctional. Until the political system is fixed, we will see more populist military posturing and one-upmanship. Not that I intend to imply that Palestinian politics is any better. It most certainly isn't.
But this certainly looks like the sort of course that Israel should be steering. It's the first article I've seen in a while that that offers anything remotely sensible in the near term. I suspect though, it's a bit of a pipe dream.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
