The Burning Fuse...

[I suppose that what follows below could be seen as a background, after the recent events which caused me to compose and post the day before about Ooog and Schmoog.

In any case, although I hope it is still not to extinguish, I do strongly feel that the fuse, which will ignite the conflagration which can only be thought of as the Ultimate Wars, was lit the day Yitzhak Rabin was murdered.]

It is those who have the power who have to make the first move in a situation collapsing in a spiral of violence. This is especially true when the party with the power is an intruding force.

An obvious problem course is that the perceptions of the various sides are -- incompatible.

The English were incapable of seeing themselves as outsiders, intruders. One side in Northern Ireland saw themselves, not as Scottish Immigrants, but as rightful heirs returning to their Homeland -- the Irish population had a rather opposing view.

The years the Thatcher gov't refused to "negotiate with terrorists" were wasted. It was obvious, even to a relatively ignorant person like myself that this was a bullshit stand point. The only way to end the conflict militarily would have been to either expel or exterminate the entire Catholic population from the North. A political solution, negotiation was the only real solution. Finally, it was the Brits, with the support and pressure of the US that made moves which ended in ending the bloody stalemate. True, the present situation is not perfect or even stable for certain. But it's better than the bloodiness that ruled before.

This is ever so much more true of the eye of the storm in the Muddled East -- so much so that it is almost impossible to speak of the actual situation on the ground and the incredible suffering of millions of people there without being accused of a bias of anti-semitism -- which is weird since most of the people involved are semites, albeit affiliated with different religious systems..

The Oslo Accord in 1993 was a turning point -- again marked by the influence pressure of the US as a superpower as well as the brave initiative of the Rabin gov't.

Three things snuffed this small flame of hope.

One was, of course, the murder of Rabin. The second was the goal of a Greater Israel pursed by the Netanyahoo and Sharon gov'ts. The third was the corruption and incompetence of the Arrafat led Fatah and PLO. This led to the rise of the Hamas movement.

The present situation is that people are being murdered, except for their innocence, indsicriminently by the handfuls, by the dozens and by the hundreds in both Israel and the Gaza. As this goes on, land continues to be expropriated on the West Bank to sate the dream of a Greater Israel.

Again, there is no way out of a tragic situation except negotiation. Again, it is the party with the power and which is also the intruder, in the Gaza and the West Bank, which can initiate negotiation.

Unfortunately -- and this is a failing of the Bush administration which exceeds even Iraq -- the US has not used its influence and power in any meaningful way -- and there are still elements in the Olmert gov't which see "transfer" [expulsion] and even "shoah" [annihilation] as the final solution.

Fifteen years ago I saw the fuse lit which will eventually ignite what, in the Third Galaxy, were known as the Ultimate Wars. But it does not have to be. The burning fuse could still be extinguished