Tinder Box

From Tunisia to Bahrain, Libya to Syria, Egypt to Yemen, the ferment and turmoil in the Middle East is either heartening or frightening, depending on one's perspective. All the problems that Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iran are facing with their exploited populations finally raising their voices to demand their due as entitled citizens has certainly caused the world to sit up and take notice.

And, in the singular case of Libya, the West has once again come to the aid of an embattled Muslim population, to save it this time from their own. Of course, the Arab world is in there too, engaged along with NATO; Dubai and United Arab Emirates have flown a few sorties in the 'no-fly' UN-mandated interruption in Moammar Gadhafi's volatile and deadly response to his regime's opponents.

Syria is pounding the hell, if not the life, out of those of its population, like the citizen-denied Kurds who have the effrontery to defy the Baathist al-Assad dynasty. Just as Col. Gadhafi confides to the world at large that it is al-Qaeda that is responsible for the drug-addled young men who have attacked his cities, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad informs the world that the incitement to riot in his country emanates from the State of Israel.

Egyptians are newly surprised that the country's military which calmly and sternly took over from the protesters in Tahrir Square are not hastening the country into democracy. President Hosni Mubarak may be absent from the seat of power, but the power behind his throne is not. A blogger who dared to "insult the military" is now imprisoned, while human rights advocates claim countless people have been arrested and tried before military courts since the uprising.

Those who celebrated their triumph as successful protesters in Tahrir Square are now among many held in detention and subjected to torture, with virginity tests for female activists. The once-hated police who maintained order in the streets and neighbourhoods of Cairo are nowhere to be seen, but domestic crime is everywhere, untrammelled and threatening civic chaos.

"The revolution has so far managed to get rid of the dictator, but the dictatorship still exists", wrote the blogger for whom his posting may cost him three years of his life in prison should his secret trial unfold as it will. Perhaps the problem simply is that the military acts as an unguided missile and does not quite know how to react, and where to turn for guidance itself.

And a conflicted Hamas, torn between its political and its military wings, sues for a resumption of a cease-fire with Israel, while continuing to lob off rockets and anti-tank missiles across from Gaza into Israel. Israel, responding as she always does to ensure that the jihadists know of a certainty, that if they attack Israel, Israel attacks back. Hamas fighters, working out of the close confines of crowded Palestinian areas, deliberately invite responses from the IDF.

So that, when Palestinian Gazan civilians are wounded or killed - better yet, if there are children harmed or killed - Hamas can shout to the world at large - "see our oppressors, the killers of women and children - do something!" While firing off dozens of mortar rounds and rockets into southern Israel.

"The IDF regrets that the Hamas terrorist organization chooses to operate from within its civilian population, using it as a 'human shield'", explains a statement from the Israel Defence Forces, issuing its regret that "uninvolved civilians have apparently been injured", but the damage has been done. The only other option is to do what no country will agree to: stand by and allow itself and its population to be attacked.

It has proven to be a highly successful manoeuvre; for armed terror groups to fire off missiles from within crowded human settlements, inviting return fire that will most certainly impact on civilians. It is a ploy that was used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and will doubtless be used again. And it is one used now by Libyan forces in Misurata and elsewhere in that embattled country, where NATO is now faced with the same kind of dilemmas that Israel is concerned with.

Human shields in military conflict appears to be a favourite choice for Arab terrorists. They can point to the dead civilians whom they claim to be protecting, and lament that the enemy, a state actor, has no respect for human life. In this part of the world where deadly animus against one's enemy, be it tribal, sectarian, ethnic or political, any morally primitive actions are considered fair game.