Happy New Year! - Missile Tov!

Happy New Year! Relaxed after a much-needed break from everything and a couple of kilos heavier, I am back to Oxford and back on track with my work. Unfortunately, so is the Israeli army backed by the Israeli politicians and public opinion, all of whom are blatantly exploiting the momentary power void to reassert themselves in the Middle East. Unless we assume that Israel's leaders think that the Palestinians will flee Gaza and the West Bank altogether, the strategy is so self-defeating, so short-sighted that it might create the most callous, the most stupid humanitarian catastrophe the Middle East has seen in years. The best (or should I say self-evident) analysis I have read is from the Economist:

Taking Hamas down a peg is one thing. But even in the event of Israel “winning” in Gaza, a hundred years of war suggest that the Palestinians cannot be silenced by brute force. Hamas will survive, and with it that strain in Arab thinking which says that a Jewish state does not belong in the Middle East. To counter that view, Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also that it is willing to give up the land—the West Bank, not just Gaza—where the promised Palestinian state must stand. Unless it starts doing that convincingly, at a minimum by freezing new settlement, it is Palestine’s zealots who will flourish and its peacemakers who will fall back into silence. All of Israel’s friends, including Barack Obama, should be telling it this.

As is often the case, Jon Stewart nails it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5IHcMlBuE