The complete idiot’s guide to Mideast peace – part 149

Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire, aims to deal Hamas long-term blow | The Times of Israel  ‘Senior official says military goal is to eradicate rocket threat for foreseeable future, not provide ‘a Band-Aid’ ‘

Just what is ‘long-term’ here? How is it to be reckoned? In days, weeks, months or even years?

Or is the ‘foreseeable future’ just a vaguely understood concept, a catch-all phrase for something no one is ever quite sure about and over which real and positive control can never hope to be exercised?

Well, seven decades of hard blows, soft blows and various gradations of everything in between have achieved very little in terms of Palestinian-Israeli coexistence and nothing at all as far as a final settlement of aspirations and grievances going back whole generations.

Thus, to continue on in very much the exact same manner as before is most unlikely to yield results any different from those already to hand: Rocket attacks on Israel, airstrikes on Gaza, more death and destruction by either side and still further widening of a conflict begun 66 years ago.

Time, therefore, to adopt a strategy with real potential, more than enough to guarantee bringing certain closure to so open-ended a contest, to eradicate the need for inconclusive combat and restore some degree of good order and respite to a region long overdue for such ministrations.

www.laxiankey.com – ‘ for those of us with better things to do.’

Or does the current way of settling matters have some unseen but credible remedial action not yet vouched safe to the rest of us mere mortals?

If it has, then I and many others will be most pleasantly surprised.