Gaza suffers for the sake of yet another lesson “Israel” refuses to learn

Source: Daily Star, 4-11-2006
Lebanon has sat near the top of the international community`s diplomatic agenda since this past summer`s war with "Israel" broke out on July 12, a fact that has helped maintain the UN-brokered August 14 cessation of hostilities and served to buttress Beirut`s efforts to obtain reconstruction assistance. Unfortunately, the unusual focus on Lebanese issues has also provided convenient cover for another exercise in "Israeli" brutality, namely the merciless pummeling of the Gaza Strip. The people of that unfortunate patch of land have been subjected to more than three years of steadily increasing violence, and there appears to be no end in sight.
Today`s ugliness in Gaza will be no more successful than past attempts at using a preponderance of military power to extinguish Palestinian aspirations, and unless "Israel" finally incurs some form of cost for its shameless bullying of a desperate people, no one should expect that the crisis will end any time soon. As some early Zionist leaders warned their more hawkish colleagues, reliance on the profligate use of armed force as "Israel's" primary interface with the Arab world can never bring about its acceptance by the region. Those more sensible voices went unheeded, and so "Israel's" history since 1948 has been one of repeated failure to learn from past mistakes in this vein, a trend made possible by the blanket impunity bestowed on the Jewish state by it principal benefactor, the United States.
The terrible events of September 11, 2001, should have demonstrated to America once and for all that blind support for its irksome ally was causing more problems than it ever solved. Instead, the Bush administration has only increased its acquiescence in "Israel's" counterproductive strategy of opting instinctively for the disproportionate use of force in defense of policies and practices that violate international law at every turn.
As The Daily Star went to press, former "Israeli" Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was still clinging to life despite a heart problem that has apparently worsened the coma in which he has been for 10 months. Given his participation in various capacities during virtually all of "Israel's" many wars, Sharon`s career illustrates perfectly the futility of relying on the gun. In the end, his despicable actions during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon were not enough to frustrate his domestic political ambitions, but they did ensure the birth of the very resistance that humiliated his successor, Ehud Olmert, in July and August. This pattern of depredation and retaliation, interrupted only by periods of rearmament by all parties, will continue unless and until an American government finds the steel to put limits on an "Israeli" one.