Originally Posted by
Stavros
It is a pity that people like Rashida Tlaib are allowing their emotional reaction to replace a more rational approach to a conflict that is now over 100 years old. It would have been better for her to make a case for what happens next rather than add to the litany of grief and anger that has erupted since the 7th of October. She might ask what on earth Hamas intended with its sickening violence, and may or may not be aware of division in the movement which I suspect will see it splinter and become a spent force in Gaza, though I don't doubt some militants will regroup and rebrand.
The US has taken sides with Israel since 1967, a fact Americans must deal with, but deal with through the democratic process. It cannot be right that such tensions threaten the security of Jews and Muslims in their own homes, when the focus right now must be on the negotiations required to release the surviving hostages. The future looks bleak right now, but if Rashida Tlaib and other members of the House and Senate were to take a more inclusive view, they might understand the predicament Biden and Blinken are in, and also if they want to, make political capital out of the fact that we are living, on the one hand, with a century of denial of Palestinian rights, and in just the last decade the disastrous Middle Eastern policy of Donald Trump whose uncritical view of Israeli policy, his endorsement of Israel's illegal annexation of Syrian territory -as blatant a crime as Russia's annexation of Eastern Ukraine, also supported by Trump- has fed into the nihilistic despair we saw on the 7th October.
Together, Netanyahu and Trump strutted around the region as if they owned it. It may be the case that they acknowledged power has shifted from Egypt, Syria and Iraq to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, but Kushner's business deals, designed to protect his family's investments in Israel and the West Bank, were never going to create a new Middle East as long as they concluded the Palestinians are powerless and irrelevant.
Nobody can be indifferent to Palestinian rights now, but finding a way to achieve them will require sound minds to step back,stop the shouting, and start the talking.
