Will the Mideast Go Up in Flames this Summer?

The truth would seem to be that Israel can neither wage a full-scale war against its opponents nor make peace with them. It is therefore condemned to continue to rely on its present policies of besieging Gaza, intimidating its opponents by long-distance air and commando strikes, and decapitating hostile resistance movements by assassination, says Patrick Seale.

These are dangerously unsettled times in the Middle East. There are so many bitter scores to settle, so much violent dissension, such implacable hatreds, that it would take only a spark to set the whole region alight. Or so it would seem. Many observers predict a hot and bloody summer.

What they have in mind is not only a continuation of the calamitous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possible extension of the Afghan conflict to the tribal areas of Pakistan, but rather a major war in the Levant.

The fear in the region is of another war breaking out between Israel and its neighbours, a war which would engulf Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territories -- and even risk an intervention by Iran. In view of America's close alliance with Israel, American interests would inevitably be affected.

In a new warning this week, the US State Department urged Americans to defer traveling to Lebanon and advised those in the country to "consider carefully the risk of remaining."

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