By Stan Goodenough
Jan 05, 2007
Israel, which as a nation does not celebrate the Gregorian New Year, nonetheless woke up on January 1 to learn that their little country is set to be more than ever at the center of world scrutiny and pressure in 2007.
In an interview published concomitant with his assumption of office on the first day of the year, brand new United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon revealed that he, like British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the majority of world leaders, saw solving the Israel-‘Palestine’ conflict as key to sorting out the rest of the mess in the Middle East.
This does not necessarily mean Ban believes Israel per se is to blame– Israelis have expressed the hope that he would be friendly towards their country.
It strongly suggests, however, that under his leadership the international community which is pushing so hard to see Israel surrender its land to the Arabs will continue – and very likely intensify – that push; and all the more as an appeasement-inclined West becomes desperate to defuse the Iranian nuclear standoff.
“If the issues with the conflicts between Israel and Palestine go well, [resolutions of] other issues in the Middle East, including Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Syria, are likely to follow suit. I will meet with the concerned parties as soon as possible,” Ban told the South Korean Hankyoreh.
His urgency echoes Blair’s. Due to resign later this year, the British premier has pledged to do “everything in my power” to oversee the implementation of a solution to the ‘Palestinian’-Israeli conflict.
To strip aside what little “democratese” these statements are cloaked in; and to see their words in the context of a global village that is increasingly impatient with the situation – and particularly with Israel’s part in it – is to understand the growing fear that the world may soon regard the Jewish state as an intolerable aggravation.
Reporting on Ban’s comments, The Jerusalem Post said that his perception is at variance with Israel’s.
Jerusalem holds that the roots of the problem in the region are “terrorism, Islamic radicalism and extremism, and hatred of the West.”
In its ‘war on terror’ the United States under President George W. Bush has been inclined to address the threat from a point closer to Israel’s – confronting the merchants of jihad and giving Israel a little more room to maneuver.
That relative “grace period” is now thought to be over. With Washington having to give the lion’s share of its attention to Iraq – where 3000 US servicemen have lost their lives – the UN and the EU are free to move things forward in line with the Blair-Ban point of view.
For Israel this means that last Monday heralded anything but a “happy” New Year.
From a biblical perspective, however, the position adopted from the get-go by the new UN chief signals that the day of Israel’s redemption wil soon be here.