Conflict in Middle East - Hate changing face of Europe

THE Middle East is so divided, so scarred by war and hatred that it sometimes seems a miracle to even get opponents to sit in the same room and talk about the future rather than the atrocities of past. Sometimes it’s hard to believe the protagonists even want to talk. 

Sometimes it’s hard not to think that they are happiest stirring hate because this appalling behaviour keeps so many of the blighted region’s leaders in power. It also makes it all but impossible for moderate, conciliatory figures to be heard. All the while citizens suffer at home or risk all and try to reach Europe.

Even by the standards of the secular blasphemies fuelling myriad conflicts, the offensive lie from Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that the World War II holocaust was inspired by a Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem is a step too far. It is the kind of bizarre and dangerous lie that makes the possibility of peace and co-existence even more remote under his scruples-free stewardship.

Those trying to establish, or suggest peace, in the region cannot have been heartened either by yesterday’s photographs of Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad in Moscow. He was there, he said, to thank President Putin for his support. As allainces go this is as chilling as any in play in the region. Once upon a time we could pretend these were remote, irrelevant conflicts but not any longer. They are at the root of the refugee and humanitarian crisis changing Europe.