Item: In the aftermath of the revolution of Egypt, Iran is allowed to send a warship through the Suez Canal for the first time in more than 30 years.
Item: Another ship, internatinally flagged, is intercepted by Israel. It is full of arms, which Israel thinks are bound for Gaza and made in Iran.
Item: A bomb goes off in downtown Jerusalem for the first time since 2004.
Item: Hamas intensified (note: not renewed, just intensified) its bombing of cities in southern Israel.
Item: A Palestinian slits the throats of five members of an Israeli family while the family sleeps on the Sabbath.
Item: Hezbollah violates its commitment after the Second Lebanon War of 2006 not to rearm, and now boasts of its rocket capabilities against Israel.
Item: The PA named a town square after the woman who committed the worst terrorist attack against Israel.
How many more items of Iranian and Palestinian aggression before Israel faces the necessity of another war to take out these weapons?
Peace, peace, the Palestinian Authority cries. Peace, peace, come the echoes and urgings from the State Dept., the European Union, the prime minister of Turkey.
Peace, peace, but there is no peace.
No willingness on the part of the PA to sit at the negotiating table with Israel. Now that there is no Israeli building freeze in the West Bank, the PA says it cant negotiate. But when there was an Israeli building freeze in the West Bank, the PA said it couldnt negotiate.
Both the PA and Israel see the contours of a peace agreement between them more clearly than ever, but peace seems further away than ever. As Israels ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, put it in Denver at the Colorado State Capitol last week, Israel wants a two-state solution, but many on the Palestinian side want a two-stage solution: first a Palestinian state alongside Israel, then a Palestinian state instead of Israel. The dead giveaway is the refusal of the PA (not to mention Hamas) to countenance the idea that whatever agreement is reached should be a final agreement, a total end to claims by one side against the other, and the acceptance by the PA of a Jewish state.
It is a melancholy time. Must there be always war? Must there be always an Israeli attack on weapons against her cities and her people? Can there be no willingness to settle, that is, to accept a permanent Jewish presence in the Middle East?
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
