Israel Toasts an Uneasy New Year

Today, Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. In Israel, the festive time is also an uncertain time. While the leaders talk peace, Palestinian terrorists and Israeli soldiers prepare for war.

The Vortex Between War And Peace

As Israelis mark the Jewish year 5768, they will toast the new year in an uneasy vortex between war and peace.

Near the Gaza border, residents of Sderot are scared and angry. For some seven years they've endured kassam rocket assaults by Palestinian terrorists, and the Israeli government seems to have no answer to these attacks.

This week, the country was shocked by the rocket attack that wounded nearly 70 young Israeli soldiers.

And during a summer of saber-rattling by Syria and Hezbollah, Israeli troops trained in expansive war games, while daily headlines speculated about the threat of conflict.

But in the relative quiet of Jerusalem and Ramallah, diplomats arrive almost daily to try to breathe life into an almost comatose peace process.

The diplomatic goal is to ignore the jihadist Hamas regime in Gaza, and bolster the other main Palestinian faction, Fatah, now controlling the West Bank and led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

To pump up Abbas, Israel has agreed to prisoner releases and territorial concessions, all with an eye to a major Middle East peace conference scheduled for November in Washington.

But Israel's former military chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, says the diplomatic process is based on profound misconceptions. One of the biggest is that the conflict is about territory rather than an Islamist creed that forbids Israel's right to exist at all.

"I can tell you that, to my mind, since the dawn of Zionism, we haven't witnessed yet a Palestinian partner who is ready to recognize Israel's right to exist as an independent Jewish state," said Moshe Ya'alon of the Adelman Institute for Strategic Studies.

Retreat Only Fuels Jihad

Ya'alon says Israel's history of pulling out of Lebanon seven years ago and Gaza two years ago has proven that retreat only fuels the jihadist hunger to destroy Israel.

"So why, first of all, go to press Israel to talk about more territorial concessions?" Ya'alon asked. "What for? To have a hostile entity in the West Bank as well, like we have now in the Gaza Strip?"

Still, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has had deep discussions with Abbas that reportedly include Israel's giving the Palestinians nearly all of the territory it won in the 1967 war, including east Jerusalem.

Journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who covers Palestinian issues, says diplomatic support for Abbas from Olmert and the United States could turn more Palestinians against Abbas.

"Fatah is over; Fatah is finished, at least in the Gaza Strip," he said. "And now that you are supporting Fatah in the West Bank, you might even finish Fatah in the West Bank as well."

This past week, Israel's security agency warned that Hamas is gaining ground in the west bank, which is much closer than Gaza to Israel's major population centers.

Ya'alon believes that a crisis sparked by the jihadists will burst the diplomatic bubble.

"With Hezbollah going on gaining power inside Lebanon, with Hamas gaining power in the Gaza Strip, the confrontation - to include military confrontation - is inevitable," he said.

Ya'alon's prediction of a military clash came prior to Tuesday's high casualty attack on Israeli soldiers near Gaza. Despite the fevered diplomatic pace, that clash now seems one step closer in Israel's new year.