Finklestein: Middle East powder keg ready to blow
By Reuel S. Amdur - The Arab American News
Friday, 05.09.2008, 02:52pm
According to Norman Finklestein, not only Israel and the Arab world but all of us may be on the edge of the pit. Speaking at the University of Ottawa on May 2 at a meeting sponsored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, he said that Hizbullah could undertake an attack on Israel at a time that it decided on.
Hizbullah’s potential is more deadly this time than it was in the 2006 war with Israel, in which it demonstrated its ability to hold its own. This time, he said, it will have missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Dimona, the Israeli nuclear center. He did not need to spell out the implications of that scenario, but Hillary Clinton has threatened Iran with U.S. intervention if Israel were attacked. So suppose Hizbullah attacks?
The danger to the world of a new Israeli-Hizbullah dust-up gives, he said, further urgency to the need for a settlement of the Israel-Palestine standoff. The outlines of a settlement are already agreed upon by the world, as expressed at the U.N., with the only dissenters being the United States, Israel, and a handful of mini-states in the Pacific such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. That solution involves a return to the 1967 boundaries, the right of return for the Palestinian refugees, the elimination of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and a two-state solution.
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Friday, 05.09.2008, 02:52pm
According to Norman Finklestein, not only Israel and the Arab world but all of us may be on the edge of the pit. Speaking at the University of Ottawa on May 2 at a meeting sponsored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, he said that Hizbullah could undertake an attack on Israel at a time that it decided on.
Hizbullah’s potential is more deadly this time than it was in the 2006 war with Israel, in which it demonstrated its ability to hold its own. This time, he said, it will have missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Dimona, the Israeli nuclear center. He did not need to spell out the implications of that scenario, but Hillary Clinton has threatened Iran with U.S. intervention if Israel were attacked. So suppose Hizbullah attacks?
The danger to the world of a new Israeli-Hizbullah dust-up gives, he said, further urgency to the need for a settlement of the Israel-Palestine standoff. The outlines of a settlement are already agreed upon by the world, as expressed at the U.N., with the only dissenters being the United States, Israel, and a handful of mini-states in the Pacific such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. That solution involves a return to the 1967 boundaries, the right of return for the Palestinian refugees, the elimination of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and a two-state solution.
--MORE--