“Hell has opened its gates and all the demons are out,” wrote William Shakespeare in The Tempest sometime in 1610. This is exactly what is happening in Gaza today with the hideous war between Israel and Hamas.
Much has been written about the bloodthirsty demons of Hamas. Some criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as “suggestions” for a ceasefire, began to be voiced by his allies in the West. The human race cannot stand large doses of reality. But there are other “demons” that operate autonomously. Last Sunday, in a radio interview, the Minister of Cultural Heritage of Israel, Amichai Eliyahu, when asked about the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Gaza, replied that “this is also a possibility”.
Given the opportunity, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “the issue raises many questions.” An American official called the controversial statement “unacceptable”. There were no reactions from the countries of Europe.
But no one expected anything different either. From the moment then US President Dwight Eisenhower literally forced Britain and France, who were involved with Israel in a war against Egypt, to accept a UN cease-fire resolution on November 6, 1956, the management of the Middle East and especially of the Palestinian came to Washington. In the intervening time since that time, one development has been of capital importance. The Camp David Accords signed on September 17, 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin led to the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty.
In a paradoxical way, from one point of view, the architect of that historical development was the then American president Jimmy Carter, who, it is true, is not highly regarded in the USA. Something like this happens sometimes in the history of mankind.
Much has been written about Mr. Netanyahu and this analysis does not intend or aspire to solve the “enigma” of the personality of the Israeli prime minister. However, there may be some correspondence with what happened a few decades ago in the same area.
It was June 6, 1982, when the Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, in the context of Operation “Peace in Galilee” that had been elaborated by Ariel Sharon, at that time Israel’s Minister of Defense.
The collapse of the Palestinian army would force Arafat to negotiate a solution, Ariel Sharon reasoned. But it is one thing to confront military forces and quite another to fight the “demons” of Hamas in the underground tunnels of Gaza, killing civilians.
After the last World War, Pax Americana was welcomed by the West with relief. But for some years now, instead of the “World Order” guaranteed by Washington, we seem to be passing through a phase of “World Anarchy”.
