The Middle East, once again, is sizzling with palpable tensions. Violence has erupted in Lebanon for the umpteenth time. Gaza is afire. Crude Palestinian rockets are being fired at Israeli towns and the fighting in Iraq is escalating with the country virtually in a state of civil war. The vicious retaliatory Israeli air raids on Gaza are inexcusable. Innocent blood is being shed. The beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, still reeling from the debacle in Lebanon last summer, is at pains to explain his political predicament. Scandalised by accusations of corruption and the humiliating defeat of the supposedly invincible Israeli army in Lebanon at the hands of Hizbullah, Olmert hangs on tenaciously to power -- but for how long? Indeed, the entire Israeli political establishment is in limbo. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a desperate bid to restore a ceasefire in Gaza with the Israelis, headed to war-torn Gaza on Tuesday. As Israeli and Palestinian officials accuse each other of undermining the truce efforts, the Israelis threaten to assassinate top Palestinian officials and Hamas leaders including Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The situation on the ground is catastrophic. Gaza faces the worst humanitarian disaster in years. Over the past week, the Israelis have pounded Gaza in a most ruthless manner compounding the humanitarian disaster caused by the US-led sanctions against the Palestinian government. The Israelis still insist that the Hamas regime is a terrorist organisation -- "terrorists in suits" -- as the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh called the Hamas leadership. This bellicose talk will lead nowhere. Ominously, the words of Israeli officials are backed with bloody action. Be that as it may, the Palestinians are resisting Israeli oppression and are fighting back. Monday's deadly rocket attack on the southern Israeli town of Sderot was a timely reminder that the Palestinians are not going to stand aside haplessly as they are butchered and their property destroyed. Furthermore, Israel's high-tech military might has not been able to find a solution concerning the crude Palestinian rockets that strike deep into the heart of Israel. And then there is the fighting in Lebanon that has engulfed the battle-ridden country. The Lebanese have been confronted by an Islamist group which has been warring against Lebanese government forces for the past week. The hitherto unknown organisation, Fatah Al-Islam, is based in the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr Al-Bared in the vicinity of the northern Lebanese Mediterranean port city of Tripoli. A spokesman for the group conceded that it set off two bomb blasts in the Lebanese capital Beirut. Ten people were wounded in the mainly Muslim western part of Beirut. In another blast a woman was killed and 10 others wounded in the Christian eastern sector of the Lebanese capital. Coupled with the disastrous turn of events in Iraq, the situation in the Middle East augurs ill. Peace-loving people the world over must work at resolving the sordid situation in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq.
