The Middle East - Peace is a prize worth fighting for
There appears to be a worrying, accelerating momentum that could end in the kind of human tragedy and conflict not seen even in that troubled region for decades.
A particularly brutal civil war in Syria — which civil war was not? — with at least 60,000 people killed in 22 months and no end in sight; growing unrest and tension in Egypt because the promises of the Arab Spring still seem so remote; an unconfirmed air strike by Israeli forces on a supposed chemical weapons facility in Syria; an Israel determined, and understandably so, to use any means at its disposal to ensure that Syrian missiles or chemical weapons do not fall into the hands of Hezbollah; the dreaded prospect of Iran securing the weapons that would make it possible to carry out its nuclear attack threat on Israel; a more or less captive population of displaced Palestinians hemmed in on the Gaza Strip and, as if all of those tinderboxes did not represent threat enough, United Nations human rights investigators yesterday called on Israel to end settlement expansion and withdraw all Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that those practices violated international law.
