TOWARDS A 'JEWISH' SPRING...YES, I'M A DREAMER

This is getting uncomfortable: I find myself once again agreeing with Benjamin Netanyanu, Israel's Ian Paisley. Mr Netanyahu has said that a 'peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality'. Yes, Mr Netanyahu, it will.

So perhaps a tiny state surrounded by at best truculent, at worst hostile countries, supported by the USA to the tune of billions of dollars a year and with equivalent areas of someone else's land under occupation by Israeli troops and heavily armed and zealous 'settlers', to use the term preferred over 'occupiers' holding the high ground might consider its long term situation illusional.

Israel needs a 'Jewish Spring' of youth like in so many of the Arab neighbours it likes to dismiss as undemocratic, with younger, less dogmatic people who can see the future and can spot an opportunity for a real lasting peace with countries like Egypt, which has started along what will be a rocky path towards genuine freedom and which could probably do without the aggravation of continued Palestinian oppression on its doorstep to give Egyptian hardliners and (the minority of) religious nutters in Egypt that we in the 'West' are so scared of something to latch on to as they oppose democracy.

But sadly, we can expect old timers like the brilliant Israeli government storyteller, Mark Regev, not to mention Mr Netanyahu, to explain how Israel is striving for peace with its oppression, its denial of human, economic and water rights to Palestinians, its continued colonisation of Palestine etc etc ad nauseaum for decades to come. Barack Obama will face AIPAC this weekend and he will backtrack in the face of the most efficient lobbying machine in the world. And we will be back to square one.

Come on Israelis: wake up and smell the coffee. If you try hard enough, it smells of peace - real peace, not armed, oppressive peace. The ludicrous Yasser Arafat talked of a 'peace of the brave'. What about a 'peace of the sensible democrats' instead?