Frank's Musings

If the people of Gaza have truly lost their allegiance to Hamas as their government, they should be recruited to lead of the subversion of Hamas’s authority.   Israel should offer them the military support of the IDF. This transformative Israeli strategy will require a degree of trust in the good judgment of the beleaguered Palestinians to act on their frustration with being held hostage by militant Islamist extremists.

Unfortunately, that trust is unlikely to be adopted by an Israeli government dependent on coalition with militant Jewish extremists. Therefore, any joint American, European, and Arab strategy for helping to defuse the Levantine Flashpoint must start by empowering the forces of moderation on both sides of this conflict.  That means at first finding and supporting new leadership both in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel.

The financial resources are there; the painful choices to discipline radical religionists on both sides are balanced; impatience with the ultimate failure ever to experience spiritual reward is universal. Deferring peaceful material coexistence in return for supernatural beatitude is not an inviting trade.  Heaven on earth is all we can hope for.  If we devote our energies and innovation to preventing life on earth from being awful, we won’t need the promise of halcyon after death to motivate people to behave civilly towards each other, even in Gaza.