> Marvin thinks, ``In order to effect any kind of withdrawal, though,
> Israel needs security guarantees...''
>
> We certainly know from past experience that all Israel ever wanted was
> security guarantees, and peace would break out like small pox all over
> the Middle East. After all the only secure Arab is a dead Arab.
>
> What are we waiting for? Let's start handing out blankets.
============================
I don't understand your point. Probably you didn't understand mine.
What has this to do with smallpox-laced blankets?
I wrote that the raids and shellings may convince the Israelis that they can't expect to unilaterally withdraw and have secure borders unless they come to some kind of accomodation with Hamas instead of trying to overthrow it by force - endorsing what seems to me to be a realistic assessment of the current situation by Ben-Ami, the former Israeli foreign minister. Hamas has a parallel interest, which it has stated openly, in an extended ceasefire and international political legitimacy which would allow it to rebuild Palestinian society.
This being the case, I said "though it may be hard to see through the current fog of war and high emotion, it's not to be ruled out that the logic of a mutually exhausting stalemate will push both parties in the direction he (Ben-Ami) outlines."
It can't be glibly ruled in either, but why do you so glibly dismiss it out of hand? It could be that neither the Kadima/Labour nor Hamas leaderships have the political will or the strength to overcome the hatreds and irredentist forces (Likud, "rejectionist" Islamists) on both sides - but these are still open questions.
Maybe this explains our differing perceptions. A part of the left has an unfortunate tendency, IMO, to see only catastrophic crises and decisive struggles ahead. This has often blinded it to the fact that in both the political and economic realms the contending parties mostly but not always conclude that the outcome of a "final conflict" is uncertain, and therefore not in their respective interests to pursue to the end.
Even the very worst black-hatted capitalists and imperialists do their sums, and things in the Middle East are not presently adding up for them as they hoped at the onset of the Bush and Sharon administrations. So, as a once avid poker player, I'm not as convinced as others on this list that the US and Israelis are going to dramatically up the ante on what they (and their opponents) increasingly perceive as a losing hand - ie. a wider war with Iran.
Unless things really spin out of control, I think it's more likely that the Israelis will be move in the other direction after venting their fury and flexing their muscle against safer Lebanese and Palestinian targets. We'll see.