It’s been a strange old week, somehow slightly surreal as I read the British newspapers and watch the local news reports of terrorist attacks in southern Israel, missiles raining down from Gaza, and the Libyan regime teetering on the brink of total destruction.
All this from the fairly sunny climes first of southern England and London, and now back home in Leeds, in ‘God’s Own Country’, Yorkshire. I’ve been spending a few weeks over here on business and have seen first-hand the stunning realisation of the British people that revolutions and rioting don’t only happen in far away distant lands, but can also spring up right under your nose. The London riots showed that beneath the veneer of co-existence and prosperity that the Brits would like the rest of the world to believe is the case here, there are a multitude of serious social and racial problems that appear to be bubbling towards the surface and that may, one day, engulf this ‘green and pleasant land’.
I take no pleasure in seeing Britain fall on hard times, in the sense of doom and gloom that seems all pervading here at the moment, in the fear in the mind of everyone I speak to that it is more likely than not that the worst of the economic and other hardships that have be spoken of are still yet to come.
Despite all the problems here in Britain this island nation does not however face the kind of threat that seems to be looming large on the horizon in Israel, where the breakdown of law and order in surrounding nations and the consequent instability that this has brought to the region has – as I suggested more than six months ago – resulted in the likelihood of a major conflict looking more of a probability than a possibility. Last Thursday I stood at Bosham , where a thousand years ago King Canute tried to stop the waves reaching the shore, and I wondered whether the wave of unsavoury happenings back home in the Middle East could possibly be stopped or has gained its own, inevitable, irreversible momentum.
Egypt’s loss of control over the Sinai Peninsular has opened the door for terror groups operating around the Middle East to enter via Sudan and then move freely into Gaza, from where they launched the deadly attacks last week that killed eight Israelis. Despite the leader of the terror group that carried out the attacks having been killed along with a number of his cohorts in airstrikes on their compound, there seems little doubt that unless frenetic diplomatic activity can bear unexpected fruit there will be a major escalation in the conflict, with Hamas determined not to lose face, even though they have said they will observe a ceasefire if Israel agree to do the same.
The problem is that whilst Hamas might agree to this their proxy militias (who still act with their tacit approval in all matters), have sent barrages of missiles into southern Israel in the area spanning Beer Sheba, Ashkelon, Ofakim and Ashdod, a move that invites Israel to have to seek them out and destroy their weapons supply routes, launching pads and weapons dumps. If Israel doesn’t grasp this nettle very quickly, I suspect that even more lethal weaponry could find its way into the Jewish homeland placing many more lives at risk.
With Iran boasting of the progress of their nuclear project, Syria quite likely to attempt to distract attention from the mass murder of their own people by potentially engineering a conflict with Israel in the north, severe instability in Lebanon, internal political turmoil in Jordan, Egypt staring at potential civil breakdown and disorder once again before elections are even held, and the Turks determined to continue with their pathetic attempts at smothering the UN report that reportedly exonerates Israel from any significant wrongdoing in the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair last year, these are incredibly difficult times for Israel and indeed for all the people of the Middle East.
And all this less only a month before Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, determinedly intends to ask the UN to vote on officially recognising a Palestinian State, against the best advice of many of his closest advisors, a move that would alienate all of North America, much of Europe, and a significant number of countries around the world from the cause of establishing a genuine Palestinian State that offers secure borders and genuine peace with Israel. This premature bid for statehood would likely result in the suspension of economic support for the Palestinians on the West Bank at a time when they are at last seeing light at the end of the tunnel and moving ahead rapidly in a minor economic boom centred around Ramallah.
Abbas’ foolish reconciliation with the blatantly terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza has hopelessly undermined his legitimacy and done untold damage to the Palestinian cause, but more than anything, it may irreversibly set back the progress made in recent years, catapulting the West Bank into disharmony and financial crisis and further destabilising the region.
I believe that the next four or five weeks are going to be absolutely crucial in determining the destiny of Israel and its neighbours for a generation. This is a time to hold your breath and hope that good sense and reason will prevail in a part of the world where such attributes have been rarely seen in recent times.
All this from the fairly sunny climes first of southern England and London, and now back home in Leeds, in ‘God’s Own Country’, Yorkshire. I’ve been spending a few weeks over here on business and have seen first-hand the stunning realisation of the British people that revolutions and rioting don’t only happen in far away distant lands, but can also spring up right under your nose. The London riots showed that beneath the veneer of co-existence and prosperity that the Brits would like the rest of the world to believe is the case here, there are a multitude of serious social and racial problems that appear to be bubbling towards the surface and that may, one day, engulf this ‘green and pleasant land’.
I take no pleasure in seeing Britain fall on hard times, in the sense of doom and gloom that seems all pervading here at the moment, in the fear in the mind of everyone I speak to that it is more likely than not that the worst of the economic and other hardships that have be spoken of are still yet to come.
Despite all the problems here in Britain this island nation does not however face the kind of threat that seems to be looming large on the horizon in Israel, where the breakdown of law and order in surrounding nations and the consequent instability that this has brought to the region has – as I suggested more than six months ago – resulted in the likelihood of a major conflict looking more of a probability than a possibility. Last Thursday I stood at Bosham , where a thousand years ago King Canute tried to stop the waves reaching the shore, and I wondered whether the wave of unsavoury happenings back home in the Middle East could possibly be stopped or has gained its own, inevitable, irreversible momentum.
Egypt’s loss of control over the Sinai Peninsular has opened the door for terror groups operating around the Middle East to enter via Sudan and then move freely into Gaza, from where they launched the deadly attacks last week that killed eight Israelis. Despite the leader of the terror group that carried out the attacks having been killed along with a number of his cohorts in airstrikes on their compound, there seems little doubt that unless frenetic diplomatic activity can bear unexpected fruit there will be a major escalation in the conflict, with Hamas determined not to lose face, even though they have said they will observe a ceasefire if Israel agree to do the same.
The problem is that whilst Hamas might agree to this their proxy militias (who still act with their tacit approval in all matters), have sent barrages of missiles into southern Israel in the area spanning Beer Sheba, Ashkelon, Ofakim and Ashdod, a move that invites Israel to have to seek them out and destroy their weapons supply routes, launching pads and weapons dumps. If Israel doesn’t grasp this nettle very quickly, I suspect that even more lethal weaponry could find its way into the Jewish homeland placing many more lives at risk.
With Iran boasting of the progress of their nuclear project, Syria quite likely to attempt to distract attention from the mass murder of their own people by potentially engineering a conflict with Israel in the north, severe instability in Lebanon, internal political turmoil in Jordan, Egypt staring at potential civil breakdown and disorder once again before elections are even held, and the Turks determined to continue with their pathetic attempts at smothering the UN report that reportedly exonerates Israel from any significant wrongdoing in the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair last year, these are incredibly difficult times for Israel and indeed for all the people of the Middle East.
And all this less only a month before Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, determinedly intends to ask the UN to vote on officially recognising a Palestinian State, against the best advice of many of his closest advisors, a move that would alienate all of North America, much of Europe, and a significant number of countries around the world from the cause of establishing a genuine Palestinian State that offers secure borders and genuine peace with Israel. This premature bid for statehood would likely result in the suspension of economic support for the Palestinians on the West Bank at a time when they are at last seeing light at the end of the tunnel and moving ahead rapidly in a minor economic boom centred around Ramallah.
Abbas’ foolish reconciliation with the blatantly terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza has hopelessly undermined his legitimacy and done untold damage to the Palestinian cause, but more than anything, it may irreversibly set back the progress made in recent years, catapulting the West Bank into disharmony and financial crisis and further destabilising the region.
I believe that the next four or five weeks are going to be absolutely crucial in determining the destiny of Israel and its neighbours for a generation. This is a time to hold your breath and hope that good sense and reason will prevail in a part of the world where such attributes have been rarely seen in recent times.
RSS Feed