> No one can predict when the reversal will come, when all the experts will
> begin competing for first place in revealing the failures of the war:
> mistaken strategy, political dilettantism and shooting from the hip; the
> weakness disguised as courageous determination; the illusions, arrogance
> and boasting; the addiction to an impulse of revenge; the cruelty and the
> lack of moral inhibitions.
[...]
> Very soon everything will return to what it was before - apart from those
> who sacrificed their lives and those who were killed in the shellings and
> bombings. And the major loser will be the people of Israel who, by an
> unmeasured reaction to a provocation, established their position as a
> foreign element in the region, as the neighborhood bully, the object of
> impotent hatred.
===============================
Benvenisti's view that things will just revert to the status quo is the most
likely outcome, although we always tend to project the present indefinitely
into the future - until things change. The Israelis have experienced only
repeated military frustration and stalemate since 1967, and with the
development of missile technology now posing a greater threat to their
cities, the latest setback - thanks to Hezbollah - may be the added
"incentive" they need to negotiate Palestinian statehood under international
auspices. That's the optimistic scenario, and even if it is realized, will
never compensate for the carnage and misery which have accompanied the
process, for which Israel bears by far the major share of responsibility.
But not Benvenisti, its moral conscience, who has been a courageous advocate
for some time of a single binational state.