Where Hawks Fly while Voltures Hover

The following was originally published under my post: The World Grieves the Loss of a Leader. It was meant as a reply to another comment under that post. I don’t know how long that comment [What Do You Mean?] has been with me because Mr. WordPress caught and held it as spam until I took notice of it. The address was right and I did not see anything that looked like spam in it. I thought I owe ‘Music’ some explanation then.

Also, the matter touches on the decades-old unending problem of peace in the Mid-East that, I think, it is always appropriate of time if I transferred the article here:

Sunday, March 29, 2008 at 9:07 am Modified

It is not often that I take a look at the peace situation in the Middle East. It’s because the situation there seems to be the same every time I looked in there. I don’t expect change. Beside that, generally Filipinos see the situation there as irrelevant to them, or matter that they cannot do anything about if not none of their concerns.

It is difficult to see any glimmer of hope, peace, and reconciliation in that region. Let’s take this report by the Christian Science Monitor:

Should the world talk to Hamas? A consensus to isolate the group is fraying due to the lack of political results. By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the March 25, 2008 edition

Excerpt: “We’re seeing the doubts about the wisdom of isolating Hamas – not because anyone suddenly loves them or agrees with them, but because they hold what Israel wants, which is peace and security, and because of a dawning realization that if there is going to be a Mideast peace deal, it is going to have to include … talking to Hamas,” says John Hulsman, a scholar in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. “It’s a return to that idea that diplomacy is fundamentally about talking to your enemies.”

Excerpt: The main reason for the growing doubts about the isolation strategy is that it has not worked as planned. It was designed to weaken Hamas politically by turning Palestinian voters against it – notably by thwarting its ability to deliver services to the Palestinians of Gaza, which it controls. On the contrary, the plan seems to have largely enhanced Hamas in stature.

Excerpt: The setting of a deadline is a “mistake” that is causing some in Washington and in other capitals to overlook “what kind of organization Hamas is,” says Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). The international community should remember how long it took to divorce the Palestine Liberation Organization from violence, he says. /Cristian Science Monitor

My impression is that maybe concerned brokers for peace should try looking more into Populace, People… instead of being too focused among leaders and themselves.

Did some really believe that they, other than the Palestinian people themselves, can decide who should be the leaders of the Palestinian people? It would be like saying that the President of the U.S.A. can be made other than by the people of the U.S.A themselves. Maybe such external meddling or manipulation has worked in places where there’s not much difference between political parties vying for power. I think not in the situation.

[Social science: External factor may cause change but the basis of change is always Internal, i.e. heat may hatch an egg but what can hatch is in the egg.]

What we have there are nations that have been ravaged by war for generations. People have lost fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, friends and relatives in that war. One thing with war, as people are bled they become more bitter and more resolved at it. Both sides have bled in a war of attrition. To the warmongers it must be a situation where there can only be one; it must end either in victory or defeat. Hamas, whatever kind of organization it is, shows the state of mind of its people.

Peace or war is surely something between one and enemy. As shown there, Hamas -Terrorist, warmonger, whatever, is the beating heart of the Palestinian people. In that situation, dealing with Hamas is indeed dealing with the Palestinian people, vice versa.

But even assuming that Israel and Hamas sat it out and shook hands across table, will that end hostilities? I don’t see it that simple. Not, unless the Palestinian people themselves will have a change of heart, otherwise they’ll be looking for new leaders who share their sentiments. Hamas then departed far from its people will find themselves no different from Fatah organization.

Uncle Sam sees himself as world policeman-big brother out there. Half the world sees him as very much a participant of the war there. We saw him brushed off the United Nations like he did in Iraq. And he is not winning unless he does an all-out Caley out there, which again does not guarantee him victory. His hands, and his sides too, now drip with blood like everyone else.

I do not see any glimmer of hope, peace, and reconciliation in that region actually. Not by all circumstances we see there today. The best chance of peace in there, I think, would be by the United Nations, seen and accepted by all as such and true.

When I came to this world as a kid in school, U.N. was then, in my young consciousness, a synonym of U.S. Accredit that to the neo-colonial mentality of Filipinos and the Philippine public school system then. President of the U.N. General Assembly was at that time Carlos P. Romulo, a Filipino. He was popularly known as the ‘little brown American’ or Amboy, if Filipinos were proud of that. Modern American TV probably would have portrayed him a S – - t.

In my personal opinion, never in the history of the United Nations that the world organization gained highest esteem than during the time of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Never in U.N. history that it tried to assert independence like it did in a world where nobody seems wanting to listen to everybody anymore.

Well, what should the world expect there now, Folks?