There’s a scene in Mel Brooks’ tremendous comedy ‘Blazing Saddles’ – (no, not the one with the beans around the campfire, although that is just hilarious) – where they focus on the first ever black pioneer family heading alone across the plains in their very own covered wagon. A tribe of Red Indians (or to be PC, I should say Native American Indians), come charging down from the hills and surround them, so they decide to keep galloping around in circles by themselves as there are no other wagons to support them. This so baffles the Red Indian chief (played by none other than Mel Brooks himself, who being the comic nut that he is decided that his chief should speak in Yiddish), that after considering the lonely wagon and its three harmless occupants he declares in a booming voice “Loz ‘em gehen” (Let them go), and they escape almost certain death and ride off into the sunset. 

That scene sprang to mind as I was struggling to find a movie-based analogy for the situation that Israel finds itself in at this very moment.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that Israel is a wholly innocent player in what is a very dangerous game that is being played out at an increasingly alarming pace in our region, but as we look around, in view of the events of the last two weeks, there is a feeling that we should start circling the wagons pretty quickly as things could start to get just a little bit ‘lively’ over here. As I’m in movie-buff mode today, let’s quote Bette Davis in the 1950 movie ‘All About Eve’ as she stood on the staircase at her cocktail party well aware there was going to be trouble. “Fasten your seatbelts” said Bette,” it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

So why do I feel that we could be in for a bump or two in the near future? Well, let’s see. We’ll start with Lebanon on our northern border, a country that rarely manages more than a vague degree of political stability for very long due to the all pervasive infiltration of Iranian and Syrian-backed militias, most notably Hizbollah.

When Hizbollah pulled out of PM Hariri’s coalition government last week, Hariri still had enough mandates to govern as long as the Lebanese Druze party stayed on side. It seemed a reasonable bet that they would, as their leader Walid Jumblat had long condemned Hizbollah as a terrorist organization. Imagine the shockwaves then when Jumblat jumped ship and joined forces with Hizbollah. Has he done this because he has suddenly become a radical Islamist sympathiser, or is he trying to be pragmatic, fearing a backlash against the Lebanese Druze if they had stood by the secular government? Who knows? The government has now collapsed, there are massive demonstrations on the streets of Beirut, and Lebanon could be headed for another civil war that could easily spill over on to our northern border.

The stunning speed of the revolution in Tunisia has triggered off a wave of copycat reactions across the Arab world, in particular in North Africa. There’s big trouble in Algeria, whilst Egypt, which has been in the iron grip of Hosnei Mubarak for 30 years, has seen the worst protests against the government for decades. If the ‘Pharoah’ (as Mubarak is known throughout the region) is deposed, it raises the possibility of opening the way for a fundamentalist Islamic government in Egypt, although at the time of writing (and things are changing by the hour not even by the day), it is Egyptian crowds calling for democratic change and not an Islamic republic who have been forcing the issue. The fear though is that even if they and their figurehead Mohammed El Baradie, (the former head of International Atomic Energy Agency of nuclear inspectors) succeed in forcing regime change, it might easily prove to be the opening of the door to the Islamists   who would be sympathetic, indeed supportive of the terrorist government of Hamas in Gaza, on Israel’s western border.

The potential for regime change in Egypt would come as a huge tonic for Hamas who are coming under increasing internal pressure, particularly since recent reports emanating from Gaza allege that more than ever, the overwhelming amount of humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza by the UN and others is being confiscated on arrival by Hamas who then sell it to their own people at extortionate prices. (Remember to remind the next Hamas tin-rattler of that when you see him touting for a few bucks in your local shopping centre).

Hamas has also been coming under increasing international pressure following the recent upsurge of rocket-fire coming from Gaza and hitting Israeli targets in the south on an almost daily basis – to which Israel has responded by eliminating a number of the perpetrators. The other lifeline thrown to Hamas is by the Qatar-based news station Al Jazeera and their expose of ‘The Palestine Papers’, a host of apparently genuine internal memos that have been leaked to the flagship Arab TV station, which suggest that the far more moderate and secular Palestinian Authority in the West Bank was prepared to drop a number of their key demands in the peace and land negotiations with Israel. Al Jazeera have sold the story as one of treachery by the PA, rather than it being scene as a pragmatic series of negotiations with the former Israeli government of Ehud Olmert, who had also been prepared to make unprecedented concessions.

The reaction to ‘The Palestine Papers’ has been one of street demonstrations in Ramallah (in the West Bank), as doubtless Hamas supporters and radical Islamists attempt to destabilize the government of Mahmoud Abbas and make thinly veiled threats to overthrow Fatah and bring Hamas and their like to power. If things go pear-shaped in the West Bank, Israel could find itself in a fight that would be only a matter of a few kilometres from major Israeli population centres.

One of Israel’s few allies in the region for the last 20 years or so has been Jordan, (although this relationship has been particularly strained under the present Israeli government), but now, in the wake of the unrest in Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon and Egypt, there have been street demonstrations in Amman on a scale not seen before. With more than half the Jordanian population being Palestinian, eyebrows have been raised at the not impossible scenario of regime change in the Hashemite Kingdom that has since the late 1940’s been ruled first by the family of the last King Hussein, (who signed the peace accords with Yitzhak Rabin at Camp David in 1994), and now his son, King Abdullah.

These are very dangerous times in the Middle East, a situation not helped by the fact that Israel has one of the most right-wing, blinkered and internationally unpopular governments in its history. Binyamin Netanyahu has done nothing to advance the peace process. His racist and bigoted foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, (who might mercifully be about to be charged with corruption and removed from his job), has been a disaster on the world stage, and his alliance with the pathetic former PM and now-former Labour party leader and professional turncoat Ehud Barak, is a national embarrassment.

But if there is one thing that might knock a bit of sense into this rag-tag bunch of opportunist who go under the name of the present Israeli government, and that might make them act coherently and for the good of the nation, it would be the threat of war on one or more fronts, and sadly that threat is looming larger and larger in the rear mirror by the day.

I am reliably informed (from a very good source) that Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ system will work and will protect the country in the event of an attack from a multitude of different weapons coming from all points of the compass. Israel has invested billions in this system that intercepts incoming missiles well before they reach their targets. I had been very sceptical about the ability of the ‘Iron Dome’ to do ‘what it says on the tin’, but after a somewhat heated exchange with reliable sources ‘in the know’, I have been persuaded that if the situation demands it, Israel’s new 21st-century technology will prove a major barrier to those wishing to fulfil Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s wettest dream, and see “Israel blown off the face of the map”.

So there’s a cheery update from this latest ‘Middle East Missive’. You’re all in the picture now, so there’s no chance of being able to plead ignorance if and when the fireworks kick off over here. Personally, I suspect that the many internal struggles that are revealing themselves in a multitude of countries in the region will first have to be played out before the attention of these nations is turned on us here in Israel.  So for the time being (however long that time proves to be), there may be nothing to actually worry about. So there’s a mildly optimistic thought to end with.

Returning to the movie theme, let’s sign off with an appropriately upbeat song from our friends Monty Python and their outstanding 1979 film ‘The Life of Brian’. All together now....

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