Fancy playing the blame game?

So Israel is attacking Gaza in retaliation to rocket attacks. The rockets from Gaza were in retaliation to the blockade and collective punishment imposed by Israel. The blockade was in retaliation for the people of Gaza electing Hamas. Hamas was elected in retaliation for …. And so on, and so on, back to the British, the second World War, Moses and Abraham.

Why is the blame game the most enduring of all? Is it because people, and especially governments, find it easier to pass responsibility for disputes than to address and resolve them, even when this means that the disputes escalate and become more entrenched? Extremists need each other and so Likud and Hamas have a lot in common since neither wants a compromise.

Peace is impossible without justice, and a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians accepted in principle the 2003 Geneva Accord. This required Israel to return almost all the land occupied since 1967 to the Palestinians and accept Jerusalem as the shared capital of both Israel and a new Palestinian state. It also required the Palestinians to recognise the state of Israel and abandon the right of return, though with compensation to be negotiated.

As long as the Israeli and Palestinian hardliners are calling the tune, the blame game will continue indefinitely and more people will suffer on both sides (though far more on the Palestinian side).

The key to progress lies in changing the game to support moderates and those who would prefer to claim the credit for resolving the dispute. Since Bush, Brown and Blair have proved themselves utterley inadequate, the ball now passes to Obama. Hopefully, he will play a different game.