Jews have been chased and ill treated for too long and even now they are not allowed to rest. Palestinians have been made the pawns of international power-brokers and they are a ruined lot today. Though Israel is relatively better off as a nation, yet the memories of Hitler and his racial cleansing haunts them. The Palestinians are often targeted because they are simply Muslims to be roundly trounced if they either fall foul of the richer Arab nations or the US. A very interesting fact emerges in this whole Middle-east problem. The US wants peace there as it wants peace in Southeast Asia - between Pakistan and India. Like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the US wants the India-Pakistan conflict to end. But notice, that the US has wanted this for so long now but have always somehow not allowed peace to settle in. Both groups of nations are economically grateful to the American Congress for things like economic aid, nuclear power and even high range weapons technology. And being either smaller or poorer nations or both, all four nations have to pay heed to what President Bush or even his minor team-members say. The US can make or break nations and we have to accept it. The recent efforts to bring peace in the Jerusalem area makes one wonder what the US has to gain from these talks.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has busily shuttled between Israel and Palestine meeting their leaders and trying to broker peace. President Bush wants to revive the peace process, which has fallen flat for sometime now. We might ask why the Bush regime is not so interested in the revival of peace in the military ruled Burma. The answer is simple, the Middle-East has all the oil and true and lasting peace there may not be to the best interest of the American people. Burma has nothing to give to the US right now and so Ms Rice’s altruistic visits are confined to Israel and Palestine for the moment.

The international community has noted the heightened interest of the Bush administration in the Middle-East. The Christian Science Monitor reports the difficulties of the talks yielding anything fruitful. It will not be easy to once for all chalk out the ownership of Jerusalem, drawing the borders of Palestine or settle the mass return of Palestinians to their homeland. In fact, whether this is ever possible, is a matter of debate. Also may be other more cooperative alternatives have to be thought of. Israel fears that any softening in its stand on the Palestinian problem will simply make matters worse for her in the future. In fact, they cannot stop thinking of the Palestinians as terrorists. Hence, the Israeli reluctance to sit with the Palestinians for peace-talks.

The Palestinians feel that Israel will just be vague about action-timelines and real agendas for lasting peace. Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not, or rather cannot, give much hope to the Palestinians. His coalition-government is dependent on right-wing conservative parties who will not tolerate Palestinians getting too much out of any talks between the two nations. Both the Palestinians and the US know this. So even before the talks begin, we can guess the outcome. Nothing radically new is going to happen. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice knows it and the international community knows it. The real focus is not Israel, nor Palestine but the US. Common wisdom tells us to beware the friend who is a friend to everyone. That person is really not a friend of anyone. Rather than of each other, Israel and Palestine would do better to beware of the US and its eagerness for peace. It is the US who will be emerging an angel of peace from these talks and can thus in the future trumpet that fact from the sanitized sanctorum of the White House. Israel and Palestine are just steps of the ladder to get for the US a clean pacifist image.

Via: Christian Science Monitor