The Despair of the Defeated

The Palestinians are looking in the face of defeat. Here is a bit excerpted from the New York Times:

“It was always our choice to be fuel for the struggle,” he said. “But our problem now is that the car burns the youth as fuel but doesn’t move. There’s a problem in the engine, in the head. These kids are willing to be fuel, but many have been burned as waste.”

Mr. Zubeidi was a hero of the first intifada. “When I was younger I thought, ‘if I die, that’s natural, it’s for a cause,’ ” he said. “And today I think differently. To die? For what? For these people who can’t agree? That’s what this generation fears. It’s lost, and its sacrifices are meaningless. Is the Palestinian dream dying? In these circumstances, yes.”

Once a people lose hope their defeat is well on the way.

Arab Palestinians are no longer loyal to the idea of Palestine. They go through the motions, repeat the slogans, act as if they believed, but really it is over. The USSR was in a similar situation in 1980. By 1988 they had officialy declared defeat to the USA (with an exchange of Defence Ministers) and by '91 they were history.

For Israel now it is just a matter of holding on.