OK, here goes with your “salent points”. I would call them complete misapprehensions.Para 2 of your post: “You seem to have forgotten that it was Hamas who attacked a peaceful music festival in Israel and set off this whole tragic round of attack and counter-attack.” You made the same claim months and months ago, and I pointed out then that I wasn’t interested in who kicked off the whole tragic round. My concern them was for the people of Gaza, and stopping the death and destruction. It’s utterly pointless to say that none of this would have happened if Hamas hadn’t committed the massacre on 7th October last year It’s a bleedingly obvious, but utterly unhelpful, comment.Para 3: “The Jordanians (and, I suspect, behind them the Saudis) are trying to act as honest brokers to seek a workable two-state solution, but as long as Iran encourages Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis their efforts will probably come to naught.” Do you seriously think that the main obstacle to a 2-state solution is the encouragement offered by Iran to its proxies? The overriding reason why a 2-state solution is impossible is that it’s completely unacceptable to Netanyahu. He owes his position as prime minister to the support of Ben Gvir, an illegal West Bank settler and Smotrich, both of whom are Kahanists, who believe in the right of Jews to occupy the West Bank, and encourage settlers to seize Palestinian land under cover of war (see Jerusalem post article: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-806489)Para 4: “the ongoing provocations from Iran and its proxies are giving him the excuse he wants to expand the war and try and ensure that their capacity to attack Israel is significantly reduced.” Yes, I agree with you partially on this, inasmuch as Netanyahu is clearly looking for an excuse to take the hostilities to a whole new level, which would guarantee much greater support from an easily-manipulated Biden. But consider carefully which side is responsible for the more outrageous provocations. Netanyahu has been goading Iran for most of the past 12 months. Perhaps the most outrageous provocation was the Israeli airstrike on 31st July targeting a special governmental residence in Tehran, which killed Ismail Haniyeh, chief of Hamas’ political bureau. Before that there was the 1st April attack on the consular annex building adjacent to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, which killed Mohamed Reza Zahedi, a senior figure within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the Al-Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria. There have been many, many other provocations in 2024. And all of these attacks involved deaths of bystanders, and in the Damascus case, damage to the adjoining Canadian Embassy.
Robert Fish ● 16d