…Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. And at last, the failure of war. The sleeping children in Gaza who will not grow up and kill. The fate of a millennium-old nation fighting with God; a State, Israel, that is fighting for peace. And at last, peace. Not a single euro, dollar or murder more. Peace…

(From Madrid) LYING WRAPPED UP IN SHROUDS one next to the other, the Palestinian children appear to be asleep. They can’t be dead. They can’t be dead without having even had time to live. Peace sleeps on their faces, clean and round, filled with a hope that can no longer be killed.

The only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East is peace. Israel has turned its millennium-old right to exist into a war against world powers, rockets and children. The end of this violent period and its ultimate consequence -infanticide– has arrived. “The history, forgotten by the swanky progressives, lives on and is lamented in the graves of the Middle East”

Due to the fighting parties’ own will, or because the first order of divine law is peace, the Israeli government and the terrorists have just written the cruel and bloody final chapter of the 90-year long war that began with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and has concluded with the moral –but neither military nor political– defeat of an aggressive Israeli State not subject to international law. The end of hate and rancor has been signed in Gaza. A new Israel will be born from Gaza, a new region, a new Middle East.

THE HISTORY

“The surprising victory of the Israeli nation. The occupation of the Palestinian territories, the end of the UN in 1948. The triumph of the hard line”But the history of the conflict has not been a mere Israeli invention. The history, forgotten by the swanky progressives and unknown to many weekend protesters, lives on and is lamented in the graves of the Middle East. The panic caused by the European pogroms, Theodor Herzl, the Jewish homeland, a State to provide protection against Russian and French antisemitism.

The First Aliyah (migratory wave) of 70,000 Jews fleeing Europe from 1881 to 1903. The four subsequent aliyahs, the Arab hostility against what they considered to be an invasion. A damn dispute, ethnic and territorial, from the very beginning. “The fear and the Ben-Gurion doctrine: push your borders back in order to be able to defend yourself far away from the homeland” The horror of the Nazi Holocaust; terrorism against powers and attacks on neighbors. The pain. The solidarity and the new international order in 1945.

And then the beginning of the end: of the great Jewish project of resistance and security; of the global project of a structurally sound Middle East; of the Utopia of peace. The War of 1947. The colonial conflict, the partition into two States, the decolonization war. Israel attacked by all of the Arab states, its defense, and its victory only a few weeks later. The just and surprising victory of the Israeli nation. The occupation of the Palestinian territories, the end of the first resolution-of any resolution-the end of the UN in 1948. The triumph of the hard line.

BLOOD RUNS, HOPE DIES

And then the Cold War and the creation of the PLO in 1964. Help from the Americans that will turn into an alliance-an unbreakable alliance against the Arab States that will arm themselves. “The realistic theory in the desert: one State’s complete security is everyone else’s complete insecurity” The European powers flee; they distance themselves from Suez. The Soviets come to Damascus and El Cairo. The theater of war in the Holy Land; the East and the West. The fear and the Ben-Gurion doctrine: push your borders back in order to be able to defend yourself far away from the homeland. The Golan Heights, The West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, 40 years of exodus before and after Christ in search of the Promised Land. The victory in six short days, the global admiration.

And once again, the terror. The terrorism of Fatah. Black September, the fedayeen, the civilian casualties, the sleeping children. Yaser Arafat, with his dark glasses of lies. Moshe Dayan: an eye with which to lead the war, an eye patch with which to obstruct peace. A time of heroes, falcons fly, hate in each and every house. The dirty war in Palestine. “In the middle of the battles, some profits say, Rabin once existed. Yitzhak Rabin, who is up in the heavens” Oil and the easing of tension in a world in the midst of a crisis. Kissinger disembarking from the plane. The realistic theory in the desert: one State’s complete security is everyone else’s complete insecurity. Egypt and Syria attack Israel. Yom Kippur.

And after ’73, the dusty road to the accords. Carter’s only positive achievement: Camp David. The death of Sadat. A long life and power to the radical fundamentalists, to the assassins of peace: Asad, Saddam Husein, Jomeini, Yasin. Southern Lebanon, the ghettos, the controls that open the doors to chaos. And the old bombs of Golan return with new names; Hezbollah’s katiushka rockets explode, Jewish and Arab Children run; the Scud in the Gulf, the gas masks, the children run; Hamas’ Qassams. Cluster bombs of lead and death. Intifada. The children throw stones of war. Blood runs, hope dies.

RABIN ONCE EXISTED

In the middle of the battles, some profits say, Rabin once existed. Yitzhak Rabin, who is up in the heavens. Oslo. The perfect and complete promise of Oslo and the peace process. But the falcons fly and kill before it is signed. Arafat in the United Nations headquarters, Samir at the Madrid Conference, Sharon at the Esplanade of the Mosques, with a pistol and an olive branch, with a helicopter and a dove.

And once again the Intifada, the road map, the following failure, the suicide bombings as a way of life and death. More money, more weapons for the war. The Twin Towers, the failure in Iraq. It wasn’t us. Iran emerges, the nuclear holocaust. Diplomacy, negotiation, Obama, Madoff: the specter of weakness. Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. And at last, the failure of war. The sleeping children in Gaza who will not grow up and kill. The fate of a millennium old nation fighting with God; a State, Israel, that is fighting for peace. And at last, peace. Not a single, euro, dollar or murder more. Peace.