{"id":379,"date":"2006-07-17T10:36:48","date_gmt":"2006-07-17T10:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=379"},"modified":"2006-07-17T10:36:48","modified_gmt":"2006-07-17T10:36:48","slug":"some-middle-east-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=379","title":{"rendered":"Some Middle East Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I confess to not being entirely informed about what’s happening re: Israel\/Lebanon at the moment. The short version seems to be, faced with some provocation (exactly what this was – the missile strike? the kidnapping? – is unclear to me), Israel has gone full-bore on the offensive, and Beirut is under fire.
\nIt’s hard to see this flareup of violence as anything other than a continuation of an international relations strategy begun after the election of Hamas. Back in late January<\/a> I was optimistic about what that election would mean for the region. I didn’t expect then that the democratically elected government of Palestine would be so thoroughly disenfranchised and vilified by the international community; all of my hopes for a moderate future for Hamas fall apart if the rest of the international community condemns them out of hand.
\nIsrael’s recent invasion of Gaza was a development of the response to Hamas, and this massive response on Lebanon is a further development. In six short months, there has been a shift in the way things are done such that violence and warfare is back on the table in a way it hasn’t been in years.
\nI can’t see a way for this to get better any time soon. It’s clear from what media coverage I’ve seen that Israel’s actions are being tacitly condoned even by liberal voices. Expect more belligerence from Israel’s big guns in response to more provocation from furious Arab groups.
\nI only hope the Iran nuclear situation stays bubbling under for a while. This recontextualising of middle-east relations is, I suspect, also about Israel being positioned by the US to where it can launch bombing raids on Iran’s nuclear capacity with relative impunity (and the US gets to keep its hands fairly clean). If this is ever realised, then there really will be hell to pay.
\nEDIT: Having done a bit more reading about what’s happened, I’m now aware of the huge inadequacy of my short version, above. Oh well. The rest still fits, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I confess to not being entirely informed about what’s happening re: Israel\/Lebanon at the moment. The short version seems to be, faced with some provocation (exactly what this was – the missile strike? the kidnapping? – is unclear to me), Israel has gone full-bore on the offensive, and Beirut is under fire. It’s hard to … Continue reading Some Middle East Thoughts<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-67","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}