Israel in the Season of Dread - NY Times

[groovedaddy]

JERUSALEM — After a year of painful violence — Hamas rockets flying into Israeli communities, soldiers killed and wounded on forays into Gaza — one might have expected the start of a six-month cease-fire with Hamas to be hailed here as good news. Yet what was the front page headline in Maariv newspaper that day? “Fury and Fear.”

That says a great deal about the mood in Israel, a widely shared gloom that this nation is facing alarming threats both from without and within. Seen from far away, last week must have offered some hope that the region was finally at, or near, a turning point: the truce with Hamas, negotiated by Egypt, started on Thursday; other Palestinian-Israeli talks were taking place on numerous levels that both sides said were opening long-closed issues; there were also Turkish-mediated Israeli negotiations with Syria, and a new offer to yield territory to Lebanon along with a call for direct talks between Jerusalem and Beirut.

But it looked very different here. Most Israelis consider the truce with Hamas an admission of national failure, a victory for a radical group with a vicious ideology. As they look ahead, Israelis can’t decide which would be worse, for the truce to fall apart (as polls show most expect it to do), or for Hamas actually to make it last, thereby solidifying the movement’s authority in Palestinian politics over the more secular Fatah. Moreover, most think that Syria should not get back the Golan Heights — its ostensible aim in talking with Israel — and that the truces and negotiations amount to little without the return of captured Israeli soldiers held for the past two years.

Indeed, the “fury” in the headline of Maariv, a mass-selling center-right paper, was at the failure, in the Hamas deal, to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit, still held by Hamas after being seized two years ago. And the “fear” was about the fates of two other Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who had been captured by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. The militia seems to be on the verge of completing a prisoner swap with Israel, but most everyone here dreads that the two Israelis are dead, and the swap will involve only their remains.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/weekinreview/22bronner.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Israel has enough on its plate without starting something with Iran . . .

Sometimes I believe there is a faction within the Israeli government infatuated with the concept of recreating Masada. ("Masada shall not fall again!")