The complete idiot’s guide to Mideast peace – part 202

Israel calls partial humanitarian truce as rockets continue to fly | The Times of Israel

‘Timeout to last four hours: UN calls for accountability after UNRWA school hit, killing at least 15; army says it was returning fire; rockets shot at Israel after quiet night; fighting reported around Strip’

After 23 days of almost unrelenting conflict with airstrikes, rockets attacks and now troops deployed into Gaza, a 4 hour ceasefire can hardly be described as a great result. However, it must better than a zero hour ceasefire even if no partnership for peace can ever emerge from so minor a move towards any sort of possible compromise deal.

But if a partnership can never be established in the conventional sense between Israelis and Palestinians because their national, political and religious ideologies prevent this, then an unconventional variant may need be forged and, if necessary, imposed directly upon all the parties concerned.

And, strangely enough, such an imposition should not be so very difficult to arrange and be sustained for quite long enough to have it serve as a basis for peace and stability in a region not exactly renowned for either.

Sometimes you can search an entire lifetime for what has been staring you in the face all along. If peace or, at the very least, the absence of conflict has to be the first requirement for progress out and away from decades of contention and strife, then securing that commodity must be priority number one, no matter what the costs entail or the risks run.

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

Actually, the costs involved here would be very small indeed, virtually non-existent. And, as for the risks, these are likely to be far less than those shouldered by the majority of people already locked in this battle.