Is Israel deliberately trying to create a failed Palestinian state...?

juan cole thinks that may be the case...

The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that "we have no one to talk to" a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.

just one more thing - not unlike north korea - that our obsessions with iraq and seemingly endless domestic political crises, although both certainly critical, keep us from attending to properly...

I think ignoring it is a big mistake. It is part of what got the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon bombed, and it came into the Fallujah crisis in Iraq in 2004. A lot of Iraqis think of US troops in their country as essentially Israelis and call them al-yahud, "the Jews." Like it or not, this conflict helps shape our lives and our image in the world. I know that rightwing Zionists are typically ruthless in trying to squelch any discussion of the topic, and I've had lots of readers write me that they are afraid of being labelled "anti-Semites" for speaking out. But if you aren't a bigot, why be afraid of being called one? The charge would be self-evidently untrue to anyone who knew you, and why should we care what people think of us, who don't know us? The irony is that the virulence of the racism of most rightwing Zionists toward Arabs is mind-blowing.

even with the small amount of traffic on this blog, i've already been accused of anti-semitism for posting on the entirely disproportionate israeli attacks in gaza seemingly targeted toward toppling the government... but, i believe juan cole is absolutely correct... we may be continuing to fuel the jihadist fires by staying in iraq, but it's the arab-israeli problem that's the underlying problem...

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