Gideon Levy looks at another conflict to shed some light on the Israel/Palestine one:
“The war in Bosnia was shorter, and bloodier, than our own. Any visitor to Sarajevo during the war witnessed brute hatred and remorseless cruelty that exceeded forms of hostility between ourselves and the Palestinians…As the war in Sarajevo reached its peak, the Oslo Accords were signed in Washington. Ten years later, everything here is seeped in blood, where residents of Sarajevo follow a relatively tranquil routine, albeit one shadowed by problems and fears. A city that hosted Winter Olympic Games eight years before war erupted in it today provides its residents security, eight years after the war and siege came to an end. In its way, this Sarajevo sequence should raise our hopes: if the fighting ended in violent, contentious Bosnia, one might conclude that any dispute eventually has a resolution.”
One major difference between Sarajevo and Israel/Palestine is that the U.S. did not insist that the parties resolve the conflict themselves and self-police any agreement. The international community is firmly in charge of the transition from conflict to quiet.
But the U.S. refuses to do the same in Israel/Palestine for one bad reason: central to Zionist ideology is the myth that after the Holocaust, Jews have to protect themselves and can trust no one else to do that properly. So Israel’s “supporters” in the U.S. work very hard to make sure the resolution of the conflict is not internationalized. Sadly, today once again we see the huge gap between myth and reality: three more Jews were killed in Netzarim, under the nose of Jewish soldiers “protecting” them.
