10 march 2012, here we go again

In 1996, while I was living there, israel assassinated yechiel 'the bombmaker' ayyash in gaza. It was supposedly in retaliation for his work developing palestinian suicide bombings. Of course as night follows day it led to a whole new spate of such bombs, several of which I was caught up with on the streets of tel aviv. Israelis do panic and pandemonium in a pretty orderly way, and looking back now it's amazing how quickly you learn to live with the fact that the bus you're about to get on might well explode. I recall one friend on such a bus. 30-odd people were killed, but as he was sat at the back, he walked away with cuts and bruises - and an exemption from his army service. Still today though, words like extradition and due process aren't quite translated accurately into hebrew. Ayyash was tracked and killed when his friend was tricked into giving him a mobile phone, which promptly exploded. No such ingenuity with the assassination of zohair al-qaisi yesterday. And the palestinians don't have the means to carry out suicide attacks these days, resorting instead to sporadic rocket fire. This inevitably brings israeli retaliation, and so the whole cycle gets going again, until someone pretends to try and get the peace process going again. This will never happen until israel comes to terms with the need to speak to those it thinks are its enemies, primarily today hamas. You don't need to make peace with your friends. There's no sign whatsoever of that happening though, nor of anyone making them do so. That the agenda of the israeli prime minister's recent visit to washington was dominated by iran was a triumph. Notably absent was any pressure to move anything forward on "the palestinian track". They are in a more hopeless situation now than they were then, as is any occasional optimism (8 september 2011, 30 april 2011)