The world was recently treated to a macabre display of savagery in the Middle East. It was the usual war between Israel and Palestine.

As long as human memory goes, Israel has been at war with the entire Arab world, which would stop at nothing to destroy the tiny Jewish state. However, despite being encircled on all fronts by hostile neighbours, it is baffling that Israel has maintained an upper hand in the unending conflict.

The rivalry is an offshoot of the patriarch, Abraham’s sexual tryst with Hagar, the bondwoman, who was donated to him by Sarah, his wife. Abraham, without circumspection, quickly lapped unto his wife’s generous offer and ravished his maid, resulting in Ishmael, father of the Arabs.

When Sarah eventually gave birth to Isaac, according to the promise of God, who never fails, she insisted that Ishmael and his mother be expelled, fearing a contest over inheritance between Isaac, son of promise and father of Israel, and the bondwoman’s son.

This is the history of the ongoing rivalry in the Middle East. More interesting is why and how enigmatic Israel has consistently crushed the Arab nations despite being a dot in a circle.

Sounds familiar; a dot in a circle? Well, that is the description of Ndigbo by President Muhammadu Buhari, who betrayed his deeper thoughts and uncharitably portrayed IPOB as synonym for the Igbo regardless of many Igbo cautioning IPOB and preaching restraint on both sides. Now the President wants to ship all Igbo into extinction because they are an encircled dot going nowhere.

It is now obvious why Ndigbo are so hated and marginalised in Nigeria but nobody must forget that water must always find an escape route. So, such illusion should never characterise the dealings of the Nigerian government with Ndigbo. Having established their Jewish root, the same covenant governing Israel obviously apply to Ndigbo, thus making it impossible for any power to crush. Is it not a wonder that despite all odds, the Igbo keep excelling above others?

Nevertheless, Ndigbo should not give enemies the opportunity they crave to destroy their land. They must respect other people’s lives, if they want theirs to be preserved. They must not be stupid and destroy facilities they built for themselves through community self-efforts. The government that did not build these facilities would only jeer at them and encourage more of such destruction because they lose nothing; Ndigbo are the losers.

I feel that exploring an article By DENNIS PRAGER, to understand the intractable Israeli- Palestinian crisis would not only give more insight to that conflict but, perhaps, also open the eyes of those hoping for the impossible wipeout of Ala Igbo:

When I did my graduate studies at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, I took many courses on the question of the Middle East conflict.

Semester after semester, we studied the Middle East conflict as if it was the most complex conflict in the world when, in fact, it is probably the easiest conflict in the world to explain. It may be the hardest to solve, but it is the easiest to explain.

In a nutshell, it’s this: One side wants the other side dead.

Israel wants to exist as a Jewish state and to live in peace. Israel also recognizes the right of Palestinians to have their own state and to live in peace. The problem, however, is that most Palestinians and many other Muslims and Arabs, do not recognise the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist.

This has been true since 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the land called Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The Jews accepted the United Nations partition but no Arab or any other Muslim country accepted it.

When British rule ended on May 15, 1948, the armies of all the neighbouring Arab states, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt, attacked the one-day old state of Israel in order to destroy it.

But, to the world’s surprise, the little Jewish state survived.

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Then it happened again. In 1967, the dictator of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, announced his plan, in his words, “to destroy Israel.” He placed Egyptian troops on Israel’s border, and armies of surrounding Arab countries were also mobilised to attack. However, Israel preemptively attacked Egypt and Syria. Israel did not attack Jordan, and begged Jordan’s king not to join the war. But he did. And only because of that did Israel take control of Jordanian land, specifically the “West Bank” of the Jordan River.

Shortly after the war, the Arab states went to Khartoum, Sudan, and announced their famous three “No’s”: “No recognition, no peace, and no negotiations.”

What was Israel supposed to do?

Well, one thing Israel did, a little more than a decade later, in 1978, was to give the entire Sinai Peninsula – an area of land bigger than Israel itself, and with oil – back to Egypt because Egypt, under a new leadership, signed a peace agreement with Israel.

So, Israel gave land for the promise of peace with Egypt, and it has always been willing to do the same thing with the Palestinians. All the Palestinians have ever had to do is recognise Israel as a Jewish state and promise to live in peace with it.

But when Israel has proposed trading land for peace – as it did in 2000 when it agreed to give the Palestinians a sovereign state in more than 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza – the Palestinian leadership rejected the offer, and instead responded by sending waves of suicide terrorists into Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinian radio, television, and school curricula remain filled with glorification of terrorists, demonisation of Jews, and the daily repeated message that Israel should cease to exist.

So it’s not hard to explain the Middle-East dispute. One side wants the other dead. The motto of Hamas, the Palestinian rulers of Gaza, is: “We love death as much as the Jews love life.”

There are 22 Arab states in the world – stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. There is one “Jewish State” in the world. And it is about the size of New Jersey. In fact, tiny El Salvador is larger than Israel.

Finally, think about these two questions: If, tomorrow, Israel laid down its arms and announced, “We will fight no more,” what would happen? And if the Arab countries around Israel laid down their arms and announced “We will fight no more,” what would happen?

In the first case there would be an immediate destruction of the state of Israel and the mass murder of its Jewish population. In the second case, there would be peace the next day.

As I said at the outset, it is a simple problem to describe: One side wants the other dead – and if it didn’t, there would be peace.

Please remember this: There has never been a state in the geographic area known as Palestine that was not Jewish. Israel is the third Jewish state to exist in that area. There was never an Arab state, never a Palestinian state, never a Muslim or any other state.

That’s the issue: Why can’t the one Jewish state the size of El Salvador be allowed to exist?

That is the Middle-East problem.

NB: I am not so sure if the ongoing carnage and siege to the South-East is not deliberately programmed to destroy the region, otherwise it is a simple one.

Make the people feel that they belong and treat them fairly and all agitations will cease. Agitation is a democratic right recognised by international law although it must be prosecuted reasonably. Subjecting Ndigbo to scorching treatment because of the feeling that they are an encircled dot going nowhere only fuels the agitation and swells the ranks of agitators;  it now becomes obvious that this is a war of survival. After all, if they fight they die; if they don’t fight, they die.