For Israel, the clouds continue to gather.According to a poll, 54 per cent of Egyptians want to scrap Egypt's peace agreement with Israel.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised "a new Middle East" in the near future without the presence of Israel and its allies.
The Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah - which is refusing to negotiate with Israel - has signed a peace pact with Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organisation which refuses to recognise the right of Israel to exist, refuses to renounce terrorism and is sworn to Israel's destruction. The aim is evidently to declare an independent Palestinian state without agreement with Israel and ask the United Nations in September to recognise it.
Says American commentator Joel Rosenberg: "In reality it is a shotgun wedding, at best. Fatah and Hamas leaders have historically not only hated each other but gunned each other down in broad daylight. When Hamas took over Gaza in 2005 and 2006, it set into motion a bloodbath, killing scores of Fatah officials and party members, even throwing some off of high rise buildings."
The United Nations has declared that the Palestine Authority is capable and ready to function as an independent state and is only being held back by the "Israeli occupation," and a sizeable number of nations have suggested that they will support a unilateral declaration of independence.
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said last week that if Israel fails to recognise an independent Palestinian state, which must include 100 per cent of Judea, Samaria and the entire eastern half of Jerusalem, Hamas will "add new cards to the resistance."
As Mashaal, who insists on the right of return for large numbers of "Palestinian refugees" while at the same time insisting that any Palestinian state should be Jew-free, continues to insist that he will not negotiate with the Jewish state, this would have to come about by Israel's unilateral surrender to Arab demands.
US President Barack Obama in a speech yesterday proposed a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines. Israel, as America well knows, is unable to accept a Palestinian state on 1967 lines because it would leave an Israel that was indefensible - which means that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be having a difficult visit to Washington today.
Whatever happens, Israel is likely to be blamed - by the increasing number of people like Tom Friedman, of the New York Times. He suggests Israel is an enemy of democracy because it does not "feel the joy of freedom being rung in across the Arab Middle East" - despite the fact that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East and the prospect of democracy resulting from the present turmoil in Arab countries is slim indeed. Strange that nobody calls for democracy among the Palestinians.
The stage is surely being set for the next military incursion into Israel. When that happens, those who invade will find, as others have found before them, that they have attempted something more difficult than they expected.
