It's a risky business.
"A Scottish human rights activist has filmed the Israeli navy firing machine guns at unarmed Palestinian fishing boats in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip.
The footage, taken on September 6 by Andrew Muncie, who is from the Highlands, shows an Israeli gunboat engaging fishing boats while international observers hold their arms in the air and scream for them to stop firing.
No-one was injured in the incident, but Palestinian fishermen claim 14 colleagues have been murdered at sea by the Israeli navy since the onset of an economic blockade imposed after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007." (via)
A graphic reminder that, despite the truce and despite the almost complete cessation of Qassam rocket fire, the devastating siege of Gaza continues. With international attention distracted by Olmert's cynical theatrics, the dismemberment and annexation of the West Bank has been sharply escalated. Meanwhile both leading candidates to succeed Olmert as head of Kadima have taken a hawkish line on "security", opposing a plan to pay settlers to evacuate settlements east of the wall (and "fighting to keep everything west of the fence under Israeli sovereignty") while in the U.S. Obama and McCain are apparently attempting to out-do each other in support for Israeli militarism and expansionism. The EU's most recent contribution to Middle East peace is of a piece with its previous efforts, withdrawing funding from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a non-violent peace organisation.
All of which may explain why a large majority of Palestinians "believe[s] that the chances for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the next five years are low or non existent", that peace will not be achieved with the Olmert government and that the so-called 'Annapolis process' has nothing in it for them. Olmert is warning of a potential one-state settlement should a two-state agreement not be reached soon, a proposal that is looking increasingly attractive (.pdf) to even "pragmatic" Palestinians despairing of 20 years of fraudulent "peace processes". Certainly, with the further consolidation of Israeli settlements and infrastructure in the West Bank and the increasing permanence of Israel's 'facts on the ground', chances for a two-state settlement in the near future appear to be slim. The only desirable alternative, however, is even less attainable, with Israeli Jews almost unanimous in equating a Jewish majority state with their survival. The possibly irreversible collapse of the two-state settlement is not inevitable, but time is surely running out.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander