Unless you follow the Middle East closely, you can be forgiven this week for not paying much attention to the bloodshed in and around Gaza.
Well, I don't know how much anything will really change vis-a-vis the situation with the Palestinians. Even if they bring their stuff to the General Assembly, and get its backing, not much is likely to actually happen. Israel is unlikely to give up territory without a land swap, and will never surrender half of Jerusalem, and none of it would matter without the Palestinians disarming Hamas and making them affirm Israel's right to exist, which is unlikely to happen. And for their parts, the Palestinians will bask in their renewed international approval, and use it as an excuse not to compromise, and pretend that their lack of progress on the ground is due solely to Israeli intransigence, and not to their own internal squabbling, double-dealing, and need to balance their international victimhood status with terrorist posturing about not giving in to "the Zionist oppressor."
In other words, another day that ends in "y."
But I am, at least, not displeased to see that Israeli citizens have begun coming together to fight corruption and civil rights abuses in Israel. The security situation is no excuse to condone corrupt officials, nor to overlook failure to enforce Israel's civil rights laws. It seems to me that it is in this arena that there is actually some hope for forward progress. And I hope it is made, not only for those of Israel's Jewish citizens who are being disenfranchised to one degree or another, but also for Israel's Arab citizens, who have been suffering systematic civil rights abuses of one degree or another for some time. Improvements in this area, combined with a little less tolerance of political corruption, could really cause Israeli society to make huge strides forward.
And who knows? Perhaps if Israel's citizens were all a little happier and had better quality of life, if corruption was driven out at least of the higher echelons of Israeli politics, maybe there would be room for a little more creativity and inspiration about figuring out something to change the Palestinian situation....
