The Boiling Cauldron

Even if Israel were to be offered a perfect deal with the Palestinians, it would represent a surface illusion. With whom would Israel sign that peace agreement? The Palestinian Authority which, as a democratic force in an undemocratic neighbourhood has seen its mandate come and go, and two years after a general election was to have been called, Mahmoud Abbas is still President, his cabinet and himself long past their agreed-upon election mandate.

Signing a peace agreement with the West Bank, is at best a wholly notional arrangement, one that the European Union strenuously calls for, blaming Israel for not agreeing to 'peace' with the Palestinians. What peace could there possibly be, when one-third of the Palestinians, governed by the terrorist group Hamas, which has attempted repeatedly to assassinate Arafat, and is pledged to Israel's destruction, refuses the very existence of Israel.

In these circumstances, Mahmoud Abbas, representing the 'reasonable', and 'moderate' factions with Fatah and the PLO still agitating against the 'oppression' of the 'apartheid state' that struggles to restrain their cadres from violent attacks against Israeli citizens, has been given protection by the Israeli Defence Forces because his administration, despite its inciting West Bank Palestinians to 'resist' the 'occupation'; code for violence; is the only game in town.

Which is to say no game at all. Which hasn't stopped Mahmoud Abbas from blustering and hammering that Israel represses Palestinians' future. Leading him to make his ingress to United Nations' recognition. What Israel does is attempt to protect its population and its state from the depredations of Fatah/Palestinian Authority and the onslaught of Hamas, ever willing to sacrifice Gazans as fodder for the public relations war against Israel, lapped up by the European community.

Israel is a veritable ocean of calm in a storm-beset Middle East. A country which, though threatened with annihilation from its enemies, from Hamas to Hezbollah; the Muslim Brotherhood, to Syria; Iran to Qatar, manages to comport itself in a measured response to its existential angst over those very real threats. Whereas it poses no threat to the wider Middle East, it is that wider Middle East that is imploding under the weight of its own ingrained and traditional tribal and sectarian hatreds.

Where the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has serious concerns about what might occur should ISIS move toward the Jordanian border, even while its sizeable Muslim Brotherhood contingent incessantly plots for the Kingdom's overthrow. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and now on the Golan heights present another formidable challenge, not only to Israel, but to Syria, armed with their stock of advanced rockets courtesy of Iran.

Claims that the Israeli-Palestinian unsettled adversarial condition is responsible for all the unrest in the Middle East, and if that trenchant problem were to be solved, then all would be peacefulness and light, have been exploded by the results of the Arab spring. Iran's stealthy, violent and successful spread of Shi'ite power, from its borders into Iraq, stretching into Syria, Lebanon and now Yemen have given it the 'authority' it seeks as the premier conquering caliphate with its distinct Shiite reflection.

The Islamic State's rise in response to the Shiite-led expansion with its own caliphate and its surge in horrific atrocities far more public than those equally dreadful performed through state sanctioned public executions where beheadings are the common parlance of Islamic-state punishment, has appalled the world. But it is the entire tinder box of fundamentalist Islamism that has smouldered in the firebox to become a raging conflagration still spreading its toxic fumes.

And within that landscape sits the United States' determination to swivel from Sunni to Shiite, making common cause with Iran/Qatar against the Islamic State to aid Iraq and Syria from being wholly consumed, and the spread of Sunni empowerment with its Wahhabist Salafist tenure made permanent. In supporting Qatar and Iran in their conflict with Islamic State and by extension Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Barack Obama has chosen 'sides'.

His 'side' now surrenders his country's traditional allies to the desperate position of fending for themselves in a lop-sided situation of choices; which aggressor is the most egregiously inimical to the future aspirations of the United States? Religious fanaticism has overtaken nationalist totalitarianism, and the powerful mentorship of America has made its choice.