Peace in the Middle East (Not In Our Lifetime)

Last weekend, the Israeli Air Force began a now 4-day aerial bombardment of Hamas targets in Gaza in the Palestinian Territories in response to Hamas firing 70 rockets, mortars, and longer-range Grad missiles into Israel. Of course, Hamas' barrage was itself a response to the killing of 3 of it's militants by Israel on Tuesday. And so the story goes back and forth, back and forth as it always has in a cycle of action and reaction, attack and counterattack, in an ages old regional zero-sum game of tit for tat. It is a sad reminder that no matter how civilized our world claims to be, man will often revert to his savage nature in order to gain the upper hand over his neighbor. The current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is also a reminder that there will not be peace in our lifetimes, no matter who tries to broker a two-state solution. President Bill Clinton came the closest in recent times to gaining a meaningful agreement between both states at Camp David with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, but inevitably promising negotiations on a final status settlement broke down.

The Israeli and Arab cultures have been at odds with each other for thousands of years, since even before the time of Jesus Christ, and there will not be peace in the Middle East in our lifetimes because actors on both sides do not want it to be so. If there were peace between the two parties, Hamas militants in Palestinian Territories and the world over would lose an invaluable recruiting tool--namely the oppression and denial of sovereignty to Palestinians by the state of Israel. Similarly, peace in the Middle East would seem to deny Israeli hardliners such as former Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, the popularity and authority gained as a result of constant conflict and would deprive them the option of military solution to the timeless conflict.

For further illustration of the current tragedy I culled the following photos from the NY Times Multimedia/Photos section.