Moving Heaven and Earth

 ‘Mideast deal in spring still possible says Kerry’                                Times of Israel: December 13, 2013

There are always possibilities and, of course, stranger things have been known to happen. But, in order to swing any kind of solid deal between Palestinians and Israelis, what Mr. Kerry really needs is a fall-back position, something waiting in the wings and ready to take over should current negotiations fail to deliver. Which, if past experience is anything to go by, they almost certainly will.

Faced with the prospect of yet another peace program being mothballed, much like so many others, it might well be to everyone’s advantage if a harder-edged approach were taken towards the entire affair. The days of fumbling about without semblance of direction or any substantial progress to report should long ago have vanished from the scene. That these are still with us indicates a serious lack of resolve on the part of peacemakers and all those trying to square the situation for the best possible outcome.

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Here is that fall-back position, essentially a solution wherein the boy-scout tactics of former years defer to a much more resolute method, one applying maximum leverage to this most persistent of problems.

The alternative is to continue watching the unedifying spectacle of Messrs. Kerry, Netanyahu, Abbas and a whole host of others wrestling against impossibly high odds and, ultimately, achieving very little of significant consequence.

There are times when certain matters just have to be taken right down to the wire before positive results of any sort can be extracted from them. In this instance, 65 and more years have passed by without discernible movement towards some final settlement and no lasting benefit is ever likely to be derived from a history where only pain, death and violent dissension have dominated for generations.

The legacy we hand to our children in this regard should be more than sufficient to make them proud of us. If it does not, then the fault is ours, the guilt is also ours for letting them shoulder a burden that we ourselves have failed to lighten let alone remove.

And any parent worthy of that name should be more than willing to move heaven and earth so that such an inheritance finds no place in their lives nor, for very much longer, in our own.

And, in this case, it would appear fortunate that only one of the options, that of ‘moving the earth,’ requires due consideration on our part.