In physics there is something called the arrow of time.  It means that time cannot be reversed and is something we need to ponder when conflict begins.  In cases like Syria, the international community purports to do all it can to stop a revolt in its tracks.  But because of the arrow of time, such efforts are futile, only enabling the parties to better prepare for war.

I suspect politicians sense this instinctively, but knowing that it is an immutable scientific phenomenon should help the rest of us realize that a process, once engaged, moves inexorably forward, no matter what anyone does.

But there is something else about the Syrian conflict that is never mentioned on any of the media that I watch, and that is that Israel is directly affected by who rules Syria.  Among those concerned with the plight of the Palestinians, Syria has long been known as ‘the front-line state’ because it shares a border with the country that is occupying Palestinian land.

Perhaps neither Israel nor the United States has fomented the unrest that has been wracking Syria for the past year, but I find it difficult to believe that once it began, neither Israel nor the United States did anything to encourage it.  Washington’s hesitation waltz when it comes to providing arms and money  to the rebels is due to the fact that it doesn’t know who it is dealing with – or  more precisely which ideology has the best chance of coming out on top if Assad is toppled. He could be replaced by even more militant anti-Israelis.

The French website Voltaire.Net www.voltairenet.org/L-opposition-syrienne-prend-ses  reports that the U.S. is training Syrian and Cuban dissidents in Florida, complete with pictures of a seminar under the auspices of governor Rick Scott and a joint declaration of the participants. Perhaps this is a way for Washington to try to pick the winners. However, it illustrates the fact that the arrow of time applies not only to war, but also to indirect efforts to effectuate regime change: the one in Cuba is still in place after more than fifty years.

American ignorance about the socialist movement, and the timidity with which even MSNBC hosts refer to a more than 100 year old worldwide holidy, was just brought home to me as I watched the end segment of Chris Hayes’ weekly show ‘Up’ on MSNBC.  It could be called ‘Peeping Out of the Closet’.

In a time-limited soundbite, one of Chris’s guests, whose name I regrettably did not catch, noted that events in Chicago over a hundred years ago gave rise to a holiday which has ever since been celebrated around the world – but not in the U.S., which celebrates Labor Day in September.

Pursuing the history, the only detailed article I found on the internet at www.marxists.org/glossary/events/m/a.htm#may-day, relates the Haymarket riots in Chicago, which occurred in 1896 after employers had been refusing to institute the eight-hour day demanded two years earlier by the U.S. Federation of Organized Trade and Labor.  A general strike on May 1st, 1886 in which 350,000 workers participated countrywide, turned bloody on the third day in Chicago when police opened fire.

You can read the details at the above link, but what I want to point out here is that three years later, in 1889, the Second Congress of the Socialist International voted to commemorate the Haymarket massacre, and the following year, massive demonstrations were held across Europe, calling for an eight-hour day and other benefits.  Gradually May 1st became workers rights day throughout the world – except in the United States.

While the European campaign for the eight-hour day followed the American campaign, American workers were deprived of a potent symbol of worker power. They are allowed a day off at the end of summer, in an emasculated version a holiday which, in the rest of the world, emphasizes workers‘ rights.

Better late than never, this year the Occupy Movement is putting May 1st back on the American labor calendar.  See your local Occupiers for details.

That’s what I heard this morning on RT, the Russian English language news channel available in many parts of the U.S. on public stations.  Though not mentioned on either RTs website or those of CNN or the BBC, this is very big news.

According to the Brotherhood’s website /www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=29843, delegates held talks starting Monday of this week with U.S. news media and think tanks.  Today they are holding a conference on Islamist movements in power at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

The delegation will also participate in other public events at Georgetown University, the US Chamber of Commerce as well as meeting with the Egyptian community and US officials.

Meanwhile, Brotherhood leader and founder of the “Egyptian Business Development Association” (EBDA), Hassan Malik has been reassuring investors that their money will be safe in Egypt.  (On March 24 he organized an international conference ‘to support Egypt’s economy through business’).

The Brotherhood’s new Freedom and Justice Party won a plurality in the recent post-Mubarak parliamentary elections, and yesterday it announced that it would run a candidate for president, reversing a previous decision. In other news from the website:

(The Chairman of the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood), ‘Dr. Morsi asserted that the FJP puts the Palestinian issue at the forefront of its interests, because it is an issue linked to the national security of Egypt and the Arab and Muslim world. He highlighted the importance of overcoming the differences between Palestinian factions, working to complete national reconciliation efforts, and ending the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. These, he added, are key stepping stones on the way of defending Al-Aqsa Mosque and liberating the Holy City of Jerusalem.

‘Further, the FJP Chairman said that the Palestinian issue and the siege of Gaza were two key factors in sparking Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, which confirms the great importance of the Palestinian cause to the Egyptian Government and all the Egyptian people. Dr. Morsi added that this prompted FJP members in the People’s Assembly and Shura Council to push for lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and the visit by the Egyptian parliament’s Arab Affairs Committee to Gaza….noting the party’s support for providing the people of Gaza with electricity and diesel fuel and other necessities. Dr. Morsi also pointed that members of Egyptian People’s Assembly have engaged many parliamentary mechanisms to warn of the danger of Judaization operations carried out in the Holy City of Jerusalem.’

In other words what is probably the Muslim world’s largest and oldest organization (founded in 1928), wants to reassure the Egyptian street of its support for the Palestinian cause, while attracting economic support from the American business community.  An undertaking that will be worth watching.

The piecemeal nature of the information that reaches the American public prevents us from seeing discrete events within a larger framework, the ‘big picture’ that I have been writing about for years, and which, by the way, is now the title of Thom Hartmann’s excellent show on Russia’s English language TV channel, RT.

What is happening across the Middle East?  1) Our client governments use increasingly brutal methods to keep their people down; 2) The United States tries to prevent these governments from losing power, not mainly because we need their oil, but because a radical shift toward any kind of people power in that region puts Israel in real danger (as opposed to the boogeyman dangers it has been crying wolf about for decades: first Iraq, now Iran).  (Likewise, Russian support for Syria may be about retaining port on the Mediterranean, or a carved-in-stone policy of not supporting enemies of the state, but it is also about supporting the ‘front-line state’.)

One can only wonder why Israel is focusing so obsessively on Iran’s  putative nuclear program, when it is surrounded, if not by hostile regimes, then certainly by hostile populations.  Israel has been brutally occupying Palestinian lands for decades, acting as a veritable Goliath vis a vis a weaker Arab people, and the Arab street know that its rulers have been American puppets for decades, as part of the U.S.’s commitment to defend Israel.

As they fixate on the supposed deleterious influence of Islam, our politicians take no account of ideology. Across the Muslim world, the 99% wants more equity, while we want docile regimes run for and by the 1%.  On Israel’s southern border, it is no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood is defying the military rulers of Egypt after seeming to support them after Mubarak’s ouster: the Brotherhood’s new generation of leaders are more interested in seeing their country break free of American domination than in checking on headscarves, while the military would be inclined to continue Mubarak’s subservience to the U.S., its weapons supplier.

As far as I have seen, no news channel has viewed the Syrian crisis in terms of the Arab world’s greater or lesser hostility toward Israel.  The Assad regime has constituted a resolute enemy on Israel’s northern border, and Israel would feel more secure if Syria were run by American puppets.

American nervousness over the composition of the rebel movement is not about whether it is democratic, but about the attitude toward Israel of those who could replace Assad.  We would like to cherry pick the political figures who will replace Assad, but we really have no way of knowing which ones will go along with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

As we watch, helpless, the Greatest Imperial Power the world has ever known is allowing itself to be propelled into the Greatest War Ever Fought in pursuit of the oil that will enable it to continue to grow until it snuffs out human life. The presence in the White House of an eminently educated, aware man, has been no match for the Darth Vader like forces intent on seeing the 99% march lemming-like off a cliff.

Hyperbole?  I don’t think so: Even in the good old days of the Cold War there were enough weapons around to wipe out most of humanity: now they have proliferated, and a very small country is playing a game of chicken with the rest of us, supposedly to save itself from annihilation. Israel has not signed the non-proliferation treaty, and no one (except perhaps our president) knows how many nuclear weapons and delivery systems it has. The Jewish state claims to fear annihilation by Iran, which claims it’s not producing weapons but nuclear fuel for the day when its oil runs out.  (Unrelatedly, but similarly, Greece, which teeters on the brink of a default which could, theoretically, bring down the carefully nurtured ten year old Euro system, claims, with similar dramatic emphasis, that it is being ‘threatened’ by a fellow NATO member, Turkey, forcing it to cut pensions and salaries in order to preserve its military budget. Is there something about Mediterranean peoples that inclines to overstatement?  The Greek-Turkey standoff has been going on for so long that it isn’t even worth my while to Google it. My eighties book on the (then) potential for reunification of Europe, has an annex on the Greek/Turkish standoff.  I haven’t revisited the issue since, but it seems that nothing has changed.  (Cyprus comes into this equation, but it is more complicated than that.)

The Sunni/Shi’a divide, epitomized by Iran and Saudi Arabia, as I pointed out in a recent blog, is as relevant to all of this as the survival of a small state that refuses to play nice because it has a powerful backer – or the geopolitics of oil. Iran had a democratically elected president in 1953, (Mossadegh) who was overthrown by the CIA.  Then, in the eighties, when Sunni-ruled Iraq waged an eight-year war on Shi’a Iran, we backed Iraq (under the same Saddam Hussein whom we would overthrow in 2003…). That ultimately gave us Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution (a modern outcome of Shi’a ideology). Iran’s client state Syria has been ruled by a Shi’te sect, the Alawites, for decades.  Putting an end to the civil war that opposes a mainly Sunni population to President Bashar Al Assad via military intervention of one type or another is not so much going to ‘isolate‘ Iran, as it will protect Israel. (Syria has been known as ‘the front-line state‘ by Palestinians and their supporters, because unlike Israel’s other border states – but like Iran – it has been a staunch Palestinian ally.)

European progressive blogs suggest the U.S. intends to choose a ship that has outlived its usefulness and sink it in the Straits of Hormuz, claiming it to be an act of war by Iran. If this sounds far-fetched, Franklin Roosevelt, who knew of the Japanese intent to bomb Pearl Harbor, moved our newer ships out of harm’s way.  And of course there was the shelling of the Maine off of Havana in 1898, used as a pretext for war with Spain and the acquisition of Cuba.

We can expect war with Iran and regime change in Syria, unless the thought of the combined capabilities of Russia and China forces Washington to rethink its justification for supporting Israel, right or wrong. Our closest ally Britain, is already involved in preserving the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s Bahrain base, where the ever down-trodden Shi’a of the Arab world are saying ‘Enough!‘  (A former high-ranking member of Scotland Yard, forced to resign in the wake of the Murdoch phone hacking scandal, quickly found new employment training the Gulf monarchy’s police…..)

While the U.S. is still behaving as though together with its allies like Israel and Great Britain, it dictates world outcomes, the world goes about its business without us. On February 20, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan held their third trilateral conference – this one focusing officially on counter-terrorism – in Islamabad, but also providing a venu for Iran to affirm its rights and its position in the region.

Brinksmanship is only justified in a world in which one major game is being played.  The information isolation of Americans, feeling safe between two giant seas, is a tragedy, for it leaves them ignorant of the other games being played on the world stage.

I recommend replacing MSNBC with Al Jazeera, which can be found once a day in most areas, and also, RT, the coy acronym for Russia’s English Service, which, with the participation of American and British journalists, gets Putin’s message across, but also much of importance to Americans.

Yesterday’s news made me realize I had neglected a fifth item in my last blog.  Several channels mentioned the Shi’a in their coverage of the troubled Muslim countries of Bahrein, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria.  It should be clear by now that a very old antagonism hovers in the background of the story about oil.  Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan are the largest majority Shi’a countries.  But Shi’a constitute nearly forty percent of the total Muslim population of the Middle East. The Shi’a arc begins in India, where they constitute around one third of the Muslim population of that predominantly Hindu country.  Shi’a constitute a majority in Azerbaijan, with significant minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kurdistan. Iran and Iraq and tiny Bahrein have majority Shi’a populations. but Shi’a also make up over 35% of the population in Lebanon, over 45% in Yemen, approximately 30% in Kuwait, over 20% in Turkey, and 15% in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Roughly speaking, the Shi’a constitute a northern arc beginning in central Asia,  and encompassing up to 200 million people.

The Sunni arc occupies the southern rim of the Middle East and Near East landmass, starting at the tip of the Arabian peninsula in Yemen, and centered in Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Sunni country, where religious authority is held by the puritan Salafists, whose Wahhabism inspired Al Qaeda. Along the Mediterranean lies Egypt, which since the days of Nasser has had a strong national and secular component, followed by have the countries of the Magreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, the Western Sahel and finally, up its west coast, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

The Sunni/Shi’a fault line of the Eurasian continent where these two arcs meet is deepening, and the current fight over the future of Syria is the first round in a larger fight between Islam’s Sunnis and Shi’a as to which will dominate the Middle East. A resurgence of the traditionally down-trodden Shi’a across the Muslim world is a subset of the Arab Spring, but its ramifications go beyond the Arab or Muslim world.

Repeated visits by Iran’s President Ahmedinejad to Latin America do not seem incongruous if one considers the fact that Shi’ism has always been the revolutionary form of Islam, making it a natural ally of left-wing secular regimes, however far-flung.  In the seventh century, Mohammed’s cousin and designated successor, Ali, was brutally struck down by representatives of the merchant class. His followers, most of whom are ruled by wealthy Sunni majorities, represent the Muslim 99%.0   A must read if one is to understand the importance of Shi’ism today, is Resistance : The Essence of the Islamist Revolution by the British international civil servant Alastair Crooke. It gives the lie to lose talk about ‘terrorism’, and shows just how handicapped our diplomates would be in a philosophical conversation with them.

The Iranian Islamic revolution, changed the Shia–Sunni power equation in Muslim countries from Lebanon to India, arousing the traditionally subservient Shia, to the alarm of traditionally dominant Sunnis. What makes Syria unique is that it involves a reverse Sunni-Shi’a divide: strongly backed by Shi’a Iran, the Alawi minority, a Shi’a sect, rules over a majority Sunni population while its neighbor Lebanon, which it dominated militarily from 1975 to 2005, continues under the influence of Hezbollah, a fighting Shi’a minority.

When the veil of ignorance about Shi’ism is torn away, it becomes clear why both Russia and China have opposed strong measures against Syria: In a special section of the January 21st Economist , both these superpowers are described as paragons of State Capitalism.  What is significant about this assessment by a conservative publication is that the purpose of State Capitalism is to create greater equality among the classes. (On a more prosaic note, Russia must also bear in mind the majority Shi’a population in Azerbaijan, and China must be mindful of the 2% of Muslims, located mainly in the areas that border Central Asia, Tibet and Mongolia, i.e. Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinighai provinces,  known as the “Quran Belt”.

America’s commitment to Israel – the main thing that interests many Americans  - must be seen in this light. It was born of belated shame for Franklin Roosevelt’s refusal to grant asylum to Jews being slaughtered by Hitler.  Then, as things evolved in the neighborhood of the Jewish Homeland, Israel, founded on modern, democratiic principles, was our natural ally against the majority Others: ‘backward’ Arabs, whose oil we coveted.  The Janus tail of oil supply and Zionism is now wagging the American dog, forcing us to permit behavior by the one that endangers the other.

It is folly to believe that we can somehow make everything right for Israel, but if we follow the daily news, we can see that America is determined to steer the political turmoil among her neighbors to its advantage. There is nothing new about this.  The Eurozone crisis is the long-term consequence of America’s post-World War II domination of Western Europe, which began with the ‘generous’ Marshall Plan: we saved Europe from the Nazis in order to remake it in our cowboy capitalist image. Then, using the tools of the late twentieth century, we did the same to Eastern Europe. Now, as the European 99% rebel against the world America created, and the remedies being forced down their throats after its failure, we are determined to steer the Arab Spring toward political/financial regimes that will espouse that model.

Fortunately for us and for them, its people see the writing on the wall.

It’s a good thing I get emails from Europe, because if I had to rely on the American media, I’d miss a lot of what’s going on in the world.  Even Amy Goodman has passed on the rambunctious anti-immigrant demonstrations Thursday in Tel Aviv.  The video made it on-line before Ha’aretz pulled the story: http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/israeli-jewish-hate-rally-against-africans-tel-aviv-caught-video-haaretz-deletes.

Surprised to learn there are significant numbers of Sudanese and other third world immigrants/refugees in Israel, I looked up the Sudanese case.  According to Wikipedia:

Illegal immigration from Africa to Israel (often also referred to as Infiltration from Africa to Israel by the Israeli media and by Israeli government organizations is the name of a pheno-menon that began in the second half of the 2000s in which a large number of Illegal immigrants from Africa entered Israel illegally, mainly through the fenced border between Israel and Egypt. According to the data of the Israeli Interior Ministry, the number of these illegal immigrants amounted to 26,635 people to July 2010.

Many of the illegal immigrants seek an asylum status under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of the United Nations. Only a fraction of all the illegal immigrants is actually eligible for this status. However, many of them, mostly citizens of Eritrea and Sudan, cannot be forcibly deported from Israel. The Eritrea citizens (who, since 2009, form the majority of the illegal immigrants in Israel) cannot be deported due to the opinion of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that Eritrea has a difficult internal situation and a forced recruitment and therefore the Eritrean immigrants are defined as a “temporary humanitarian protection group”. Despite the fact that a similar opinion does not exist in relation to citizens of Sudan, Israel does not deport them back to Egypt due to a real fear for their fate. Although the immigrants entered Israel from Egypt, Israel cannot deport them back to Egypt because the Egyptians refuse to give an undertaking not to deport the immigrants to their countries of origin. Accordingly, the Israeli authorities grant a temporary residence permit to the illegal immigrants, which needs to be renew every three months. Various authorities in Israel estimate that between 80-90 percent of the illegal immigrants live primarily in Tel Aviv and Eilat.

According to The Jewish Virtual Library www.jewishvirtual-library.orgjsource/Immigration/SudaneseRefugees.html:

“According to a 1954 Israeli law, all infiltrators from enemy states, such as Sudan which harbors terrorists, must be detained until their refugee status can be confirmed. Israel took in less than 2,000 refugees in 2007. Many of these refugees were caught in Be’er Sheva crossing the border. They spent time in prison or detention centers, such as the Ketziot Prison complex which was set up to hold 2,000 refugees in small trailers of the sort used in construction sites.”

Apparently, anti-black and anti-Muslim sentiment has been building in Israel, and Thursday’s demonstrations were sparked by a failure of the government to build new detention centers.  A leader of the nationalist National Union party, Ben Ari took to a park in a Tel Aviv heavily populated with African migrants with a bull horn to tell protesters how he has been harassing the Israeli government to free up money for the construction of the promised centers.

In response, the Africans and their Israeli defenders, shouted ‘Prison, No, Freedom, Yes’. An Israeli woman yelled that the Israelis would change their minds if their children ‘had to be in classrooms with 30 African children, who do not want to learn Hebrew’, English, yes, but not Hebrew.’

The anger will sound eerily familiar to Americans who witnessed the Civil Rights Movement, fifty years ago. What is different is the fact that Israel is surrounded by Arab countries, and feeling increasingly nervous about what the Arab Spring could mean for its security. Seared for eternity by the Holocaust, Israelis have gone from one extreme to the other: no longer afraid to defend themselves, they have adopted the motto that the best defense is offense.

That is why, as the street demonstrates against Darfuris and other immigrant workers, the Israeli government hammers away at the danger posed by Iran.  It’s a two-pronged effort to deny the tides of history.

The tale of Iran plotting to have Mexican drug lords kill the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. really does sound ridiculous.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that this was a Mossad sting.  Israel is not about to give up on its campaign to have Iran eliminated.  Never mind its more immediate problems.

On the BBC website:

“Concerns over Israel-Gaza unrest

International concern is growing over the upsurge of violence between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, as cross-border attacks continue.”

Concurrently, Fareed Zakaria’s GPS hosted Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Jeffrey Sachs, the international economist, among others, for a surprisingly frank discussion of world chaos.  Bravo!

One thing that has surprised me about the Arab Spring is the seeming confidence of Israelis that this upheaval will leave them unscathed.

No matter what the particular circumstances of any given country, when one’s neighbors are experiencing long-lasting revolts, one cannot expect to remain unaffected.  In the case of Israel, the odds of the Arab street, which has long sided with the occupied Palestinians, becoming more involved in their cause as their rulers are deposed, are overwhelming.

Israel has borders with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. It has peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt. But the area known as the Sheba Farms in northern Israel is considered as occupied territory by Syria, and Syria, backed by Iran, has long been considered by the Arab opposition as a ‘frontline state’ in its historical opposition to Israel.That is why the West is treading cautiously when it comes to the uprising against Bashar el-Assad.

Until the fall of MPresident Hosni Mubarak, Egypt and Israel had been at peace for thirty years. When the uprising against Mubarak began, Israel defended him, knowing that his ouster could allow ordinary Egyptians more say in the two countries’ relations. Now those fears have been realized: Egypt today recalled its Ambassador to Tel Aviv after Israeli soldiers, in pursuit of Palestinian terrorists, crossed into Egypt, killing five policemen. The incident is eeril similar to the one last year in which nine Turkish activists on a boat bound for Gaza were killed by Israeli soldiers rappelling onto the deck in international waters.  Relations with Turkey have been tense ever since.

A protester outside the Israeli Ebassy inCairo was auoted by the BBC as declaring:

“Israel is only interested in a subservient Egypt, not a free Egypt. By protesting outside the embassy we’re sending them a clear message. This is not Mubarak’s Egypt anymore. If you kill our soldiers, there will be consequences.”

The BBC story continues: “On Friday, in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, a protester managed to take down the Israeli flag from the consulate there and replaced it with Egyptian and Palestinian flags.”

Read the whole report at: /www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14600357.

Israel’s ability to prevent private vessels from sailing from Greek ports, with the approval of the U.S., was scantily reported in the mainstream press.

Here is a link to a video of what happened when invited guests of the Palestinian Authority in the supposedly self-governing West Bank arrived at the Tel Aviv airport.

http://youtu.be/YrP9LiqPNjY

Being surrounded has never been a comfortable situation for any country.  But the way Israel is behaving as its neighbors topple dictatorships one by one, flies in the face of what has been United States public policy for decades: support for the idea of democracy in the Arab world

However many diplomatic or undiplomatic moves Israel makes to forestall the Arab spring, or turn it to what it perceives as its advantage, nothing is going to stop the tide.  What will Israel do when it is surrounded, not by dictatorships with a more or less pronounced Muslim orientation, but by peoples demanding ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as protesters across the Middle East are doing?

Anyone doubting this turn of events should read Paul Amar’s article in the May 23rd issue of The Nation, under the title Egypt After Mubarak . It spells out in detail where the ‘revolutionaries’ are coming from, and that is from the very same places as middle class citizens from developed countries who are out on the streets protesting the consequences of the financial crisis.

In the age of smart phones, BBC International and Al Jezeera, entire popuations have broken free of the Middle Ages to call for freedom.  In Egypt, the five month old movement that forced Mubarak to step down wahts him tried before an army tribunal – as they are being tried, or that both should be tried in front of civilian courts.

Not surprisingly, the Arab spring that calls for human rights and democracy includes in its goals freedom for the Palestinians. Yesterday on Democracy Now, a Palestinian human rights activist named Fadi Quran called for ‘a larger, humanistic type of approach.  We want freedom, justice and dignity and we won’t give up until we achieve those goals.The United States needs to understand that what Palestinians are asking for is what makes America great.’

Referring to the border crossings by Palestinians from Syria and other neighboring countries into Israel on the 63rd anniversary of ‘The Nakba‘ or ‘catastrophe‘, that expulsions of Palestinians by the newly declared Israeli state represent, he said:  Pointing out that ‘they only wanted to return home. Quran noted that Israel was created under a racist ideology, the need to get rid of Palestinians, which was easily seen as ‘anti-Semitism’ and even a desire to see the Israelis driven out. Now Palestinians just want to catch up with the democratic societies, the new alliance between Fatah and Hamas recognizes that as is so often the case in history, their people are ahead of them.

As for Israel, what can Washington possibly do to protect the ‘only Democratic country in the Middle East’ from having to become a team player in a newly democratic neighborhood?