Sitting as judge and faced with a difficult choice, King Solomon of the Israelites once pushed the issue to the brink. He threatened to cut a baby in two parts and give one part to each of two women who claimed to be the mother of the child. At this point one woman became alarmed and cried out she would rather let the other woman have the baby than see it harmed. This reaction established the alarmed woman as the mother, and the gamble that provoked the reaction earned King Solomon the reputation of being a wise king.
Pushing the issue to the brink was a gamble that yielded the desired result thousands of years ago when the judge was the king himself and the protagonists were two simple women. But this brand of wisdom is of little use in the modern world especially when it is employed to settle international disputes. Yet this is what the rulers of Israel practice on a regular basis because they live in the past and think of themselves as being endowed with Solomonic wisdom.
After the success of their initial rampage in 1947 which happened when Palestine was a colony of Britain, the Israelis pushed the region to the brink several more times in their quest to snatch still more land from the Arabs. The result was countless wars, thousands of dead bodies on both sides and little to show for the effort. Can this be Solomonic wisdom?
The supporters of Israel say it was all worth it because the country lost only a few soldiers as it gambled for treasures that would have surpassed the treasures of Solomon had it succeeded in snatching from the Palestinians what the leaders were aiming for. They add that other countries stood by Israel and they encouraged her, thus they must share in the responsibility if there is a responsibility to be shared.
Brinkmanship is a poor substitute for merit. As in a poker game, it is the bluff on which you rely when you have no right to what you desire yet desire it intensely enough to take a gamble and go for it. And when you have little of your own to gamble with, you gamble with what belongs to someone else if you can find someone willing to take a chance on you however small the merit of your case.
Israel convinced a number of countries to stand by her at one time or another, the last one being America whose power and prestige Israel gambled away to excessive extremes. Her agents run the Zionist Lobby in America and together they made America nurture Israel beyond the limits of what is sane. Then they got America to try and sweet talk the Arabs into "forcing" the Palestinians to give up their Right of Return.
However twisted was the logic behind this request, the Arabs knew it was coming and they were prepared for it in their psyche as they were conscious of the evil that was planted in their neighborhood. They used to have the most pleasant neighborhood on the Planet before the creation of Israel. In fact, so pleasant was the Middle East that it inspired the European Romantic movement of the Nineteenth Century. This was the movement that humanized Europe and raised the Continent to the level of a true Civilization. Countless poems, letters, novels and stage plays were written during that period, inspired by the beauty, culture, humanity and hospitality of the Levant, most notably Palestine. Europe longed to be like the Middle East before the neighborhood was soiled and turned into "a tough neighborhood" by the presence of the military fortress that is Israel and by her actions.
As expected, the Right of Return was not relinquished and the Arabs prepared themselves for the worst. The worst came as the Arabs were repeatedly shocked and awed by the terror that was unleashed on them in their beloved homelands in the name of providing "security" for Israel when the word security was a euphemism to mean expansionist policies. Except for a handful of kids who stood up to the mighty intruders and fought fire with fire, the Arab masses responded to the savagery of the aggressors with the kind of civilized patience that has been the hallmark of their culture, the patience that is the authentic wisdom to match a thousand Solomons.
And the patience bore fruit when America finally realized that no Arab will ever give away what belongs to the Palestinian people. Not even Yasser Arafat, the founder of the movement to create a nation for the Palestinians could have done it without the consent of all Palestinians, something he never sought, never received and never promised to anyone.
We are now left with the question as to whether or not the rulers of Israel will take the region to the brink of war one more time so as to put America on the spot and "force" the Americans to "force" the Arabs to "force" the Palestinians to give up on their Right of Return.
Before this happens, the American administration will be well advised to consider that in terms of moral authority, prestige or a clout to pull a stunt of this magnitude, America has little left to gamble away and no trump card to play with. One false step anywhere in the World, especially in the Middle East and America will be exposed as the king that lost his shirt in Iraq and lost his pants in Palestine.
And a king with no clothes is laughed at, not respected, revered or listened to. This is hardly the sort of wisdom that King Solomon would approve of.