But AFJA, Israel has been negotiating with Hamas all week. See:

http://www.alternativenews.org/content/view/1576/391/

"Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Hamas Political Bureau As the Egyptian sponsored truce negotiations between Israel and Hamas appear to reach an agreement, Israel continues its military operations bombing several targets during the weekend and killing two Palestinians.

"Regarding the Egyptian truce negotiations Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, declared that Egypt will announce a truce between Palestinians and Israelis within the next two days."

Reuters, a more mainstream news source, also reports - See:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKLE137562._CH_.2420
"Gaza truce stalls over Israeli hostage".

That article describes Egypt as a mediator in the peace talks.

AFJA, I do not think Israel is contemptible for seeking to defend itself. What to me is contemptible is the act of laying waste to a densely populated, highly restricted refugee population of civilians and civil infrastructure. Is that all the IDF is good for, is gratuitous acts of destruction prior to Israeli elections? Now, both Olmert and Livni will be at risk of arrest if they leave Israel, unless they restrict their travels to countries that will neither ask nor tell concerning contemporary war crimes. All that for a pre-election extravaganza, planned 6 months ahead by stupid, cruel people.

I suppose you could argue that, if they didn't attack Gaza, then the Avigdor Liebermans and other bottom feeders of the Knesset would have gotten even more votes.

I wish Israeli leaders had started negotiating in earnest and good faith with Hamas, after the January 2006 election. How likely was that, given the influence of its major friend and ally? See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/04/usa.israelandthepalestinians

"The 2006 election result was seen as an affront to the central premise of the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East - that democratic elections would inexorably lead to pro-western governments."

AFJA, if you are a voting Israeli, I can only express my sympathy for you. Your elected government is a shambles. I hope they can pull themselves together and get things right this time, but I am not betting on that prospect.

Sir Vivor, as a mature age historian going on 88, as well as a WW2 veteran, would like your opinion regarding my feelings also as as an historian.

As a mature age historian in a modern democracy might ask what is the correct way to analyse today’s political problems, particularly in the Middle East.

There is little doubt that today’s Middle East conflict is nothing like the major cause of both WW1 and WW2, both huge castrophies which rather disgustingly began mainly between two Western nations, Germany and France, finally both bringing in the rest of Europe and Russia, as well as the United states.

Speaking philosophically, today’s conflict, because it is so religious, is much more worrying because it is so lopsided, Western Christianity being gigantic in military capacity, while Islam, comprising the major anti-white Western forces, though huge in people power, is so pitifully low in regular armanents, maybe the terrorism could be justified.

The point is how does a trained historian go about this problem, which in some ways resembles my personal problem when I wrote a series on Westralian history called A Land in Need, in which some readers later told me I had been much too sympathetic with the murderous Aborigines who in the early days attacked white settlers homes and viilages which were not protected by the military.

To close on Iran, which so many of our OLO’s fully agree with the Bush terminology of Iran as an evil state, while personally I turn to the story two years ago about the Iranian female judge who angrily replied to a suggestion how Iran would be much better learning the American Way to true democracy, to which she hotly replied -

Yes, it is true that we could do with democracy, but certainly not fashioned on the American Way.

Should any democratic Aussie political historian these days should be allowed to think the same?

Sir Vivor,

I am not an Israeli, nor a Jew. I am an Australian who supports Israel's right to exist and her right to defend herself against terrorists.

"What to me is contemptible is the act of laying waste to a densely populated, highly restricted refugee population of civilians and civil infrastructure"

Israel has no chocie, because Hamas resides among that population. As I explained before, the real amazement comes from the fact that civilian casualities on both sides were so low.

Israel and Hamas have only been negotiating in terms of a ceasefire, not a lasting peace. As I explained before, Hamas will not ever seriously involve itself in peace talks until it changes its aims and objectives.

The reason Hamas negotiates ceasefires is because it wants Israel to stop attacking it, so that it can prepare more attacks on Israel by smuggling weapons, etc.

AFJA, Israel has a choice, had a choice, will continue to have a choice. They can treat Palestinians like free human beings or they can treat them like prisoners.

Both Palestinians and Israelis have thrown away earlier chances to build on peaceful initiatives, but the strength is mainly in the hands of the Israelis and their allies. If the Israeli government wants power as well as the strength, they are going to have to try something novel, like a more earnest commitment to making peace than to making war.

Israelis and Hamas representatives are negotiating, and I expect they must continue to do so, not just for the sake of Gazans and Israelis, but for the region.

I don't expect either party will be deaf to the "backroom boys" from the US and Iran, but there are examples of nations who have walked a largely independant path in the shadow of influential powers.

AFJA, I think it's best to leave it there.

Bushbred,
you may need to give me a clearer statement of your question. The best I can make of it, in a brief sitting, is that you want to know what I think of Iranian democracy. I don't know enough about Iran or its government or history to express an opinion, beyond saying that they have the same rights and obligations under the UN Charter as does every other member nation, including the US and Israel.

Australia pursued a relatively US-independent foreign policy in the Whitlam era, and it seems as though our sovereign rights were not altogether respected. Surprise, surprise. Still, we fared far better than Allende's Chile. Does that help answer your question?

Bushbred – you say : there is little doubt that todays Middle East conflict is nothing like the major cause of both WW1 and WW2. To the contrary, the cause is exactly the same.

Everybody wants peace. A piece of this land and a piece of that land.

Hitler wanted a piece of all the lands around him and the Palestinians and Jews are fighting over a piece of land.

Germany had crashed economically before the war. Reading some history of the area going back centuries it seems that there was always economic (territorial) rivalry between the Jews and the Germans.

Some history that would have caused the Germans to think that Poland was theirs (rightly or wrongly) -: The north of modern Poland was for nearly all of it’s history dominated by the Germans with contracting and expanding borders.
The German Teutonic order ruled the whole region from roughly the 13th to the 15thcentury before being ultimately subject to Polish authority although the German nobility continued to rule largely outside the reach of the Polish authority . Eventually most of the original teutonic German lands of Prussia returned to the GermanAuthority in the Prussian and Austrian Empires and after 1871 , in Germany.