The start of Israel's “Turning Point 4” maneuvers, which coincided with the ten year commemoration of the withdrawal of occupation forces from South Lebanon, has resulted in severe tension and in resuming talk of war in the region. All estimations and scenarios speak of a military confrontation, one which, if it were to take place, would be qualitatively different from the long series of skirmishes, invasions and military operations that the region has been witnessing for seven decades. Military experts and their deputies speak of a level of violence and destruction reaching Israel and its enemies the likes of which is unprecedented. And while Israeli analysts speak with complete confidence of taking Syria back to the Stone Age (no need to mention Lebanon, about which the aforementioned analysts say that its infrastructure will be struck with enough blows to turn it to dust from the very first days of fighting) and of stopping the Iranian nuclear program or obstructing it for many long years, Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah circles respond by painting a picture that seems closer to scenes from the Book of Revelation, about thousands of tons of explosives raining down daily on Israeli cities, and about a single week during which the Israelis will be allowed to survive before the Iranian response obliterates them in case Iran is subjected to an Israeli or US attack. Such excessive martial fiction, in both camps, indicates what goes beyond the wide gulf that has come to separate the two sides of the conflict from each other and the unfruitfulness of any attempt to revive diplomatic peace efforts. It proclaims that the state of reclusion has reached such a degree that it no longer allows the mere thought of imagining the other side's existence, not to mention recognizing that it has any kind of rights, earned or inherited or otherwise, that can justify even one of its demands. In the state the Middle East is in today, there seems to lack the faintest meaning of expressions like “the global village” or “being on the same boat”. We have become the hostages of isolated and reclusive tribes, each of which have only their own idea about their rights, their history and their vision of a future free of the elements of the present and of its bitterness. Thus no dialogue is any longer possible except for the dialogue of missiles and rocket launchers and of wondering about the range reached by the weapons of each side and the extent of the harm it will inflict on the enemy. One could speak at length in addressing the circumstances that led to a situation such as this, and draw comparisons between the political climate at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century and that which was prevalent until the mid-1990s. But such a presentation would be partial and lacking if it does not touch on two processes that took place at the same time within Israeli society and within Arab and Muslim societies. One could justifiably infer several phenomena from the content of these two processes, such as the fragmentation of the Israeli political scene, the absence of any vision for the future of Israel within its immediate surroundings, and the Israelis excessively considering themselves to be unconcerned with the crimes committed by their predecessors against the Palestinians, which has led a superficial security mentality to take hold of Israeli politics, one which swears by the separation wall, arbitrary checkpoints and extreme security phobia. On the opposite side came excess in laying the blame for the consequences of the backwardness of the Arabs on “the West and its protégé, Israel” on the one hand, and in exploiting the “fundamentalist threat” as a scarecrow to blackmail the West on the other, thus obliterating hopes of internal reform, which should have been the conclusion of a rational view on the affairs of the Arabs and their sorrows. On bases such as these, there remains for most politicians nothing more than to be hopeful of a war that would turn a table crowded with crises, those sitting around it unable to come up with solutions. Indeed, peace will reveal many vices in Israel and in its enemies equally.
