No-one can deny that Hamas has been taunting Israel firing those rockets, but the timing of this Gaza thing would seem to strongly argue that it isn’t really being launched merely because Israel has gotten fed up with them. After all why now exactly? In this short little interregnum before Bush leaves and Obama takes office?

As the Church Lady used to say on Saturday Night Live … “How conveeenient.”

In other words, isn’t this just more of the same-old same-old? For Israel time and delay has been its friend, as it has been for the last forty-some years since ’67 in terms of expanding its realm. And it’s just been revealed in Haaretz about a week ago or so despite Bush’s “roadmap” that Israel felt obliged to give lip service to, Olmert and Barak have just been quietly going along as before approving/allowing the expansion of settlements anyway.

So how isn’t this Gaza business just more of the same-old same-old? Knowing that it will dynamite the moribund “roadmap” peace talks which Obama might have seized upon and pressured Israel under; knowing it will make Abbas look like a fool as Buchanan says and castrate him … all essentially setting the clock back towards zero.

The funny thing about it is how oblivious Bush is. After all here’s the Israelis very possibly saying “Well except for your failure to attack Iran we got what we wanted out of you over the last eight years and you’re now of no use to us and by the way this is what we really think of your stinking roadmap.” And despite this denying Bush even the smallest good legacy molecule he still doesn’t seem to realize it.

I.e., the cluelessness might not be in Gaza but is instead still sitting right there on Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is the DEFINITION of an entangling alliance. I’m convinced that there’s very little – if anything – that the U.S. (or anyone) can do to stop the complicated Arab-Israeli conflict.

Even OBAMA! and his magic hope wand won’t fix this one ….. But the folks at the New York Times haven’t recognized this yet … I had to laugh when I read the NYT coverage of what’s going on … They’ve equated hawkishness with ‘far right’ politics (not recognizing, of course, that ‘far right’ = isolationism), and blamed the Bush Administration for what’s going on in Israel right now … Now, I’m no Bush apologist, but what … ? The conflict runs very deep. I know ‘Bush’ is a good scapegoat for many a problem, but please …..

The Israeli use of American high technology weapons to avoid casualties will seem more and more cowardly to the American public as this aggression goes forward.