Photograph Source: Ahmad Ezzeddin – CC BY 4.0

The world has focused its attention on the humanitarian pause and exchange of prisoners in Gaza that began on 19 January. Meanwhile, Israel has trained its immense military power and insanity on the defenseless occupied West Bank. Palestinians there are now facing some of the same cruelty that Israel has been inflicting on their countrymen and women in the Strip for 15 horrific months.

As Israel has temporarily halted its bombing of Gaza and scaled up its ongoing violence and annexation plans in the West Bank, the instructive lessons imparted in the fable of “The Scorpion and the Frog,” popular in the Middle East, hold relevance: “A scorpion pleasantly asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog then agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion replies, it is simply in my nature.”

Islamic resistance groups, like Hamas, know not to expect Israel to be other than what it is, that the Zionists in control are incapable of transformation and trust. Confronted with Israel’s overwhelming power to destroy, they know not to be persuaded by its promises. In the end, a scorpion remains a scorpion.

For Israel and the United States, both equally untrustworthy, the allegory is particularly poignant. Washington has fed Israel’s addiction to power by never

demanding anything from its proxy. It has never asked it to renounce violence, to stop killing civilians, to end the occupation, to demilitarize and to observe international and humanitarian laws. It has essentially helped create a deformed body politic, whose future is uncertain.

Israel has for decades ridden on the back of the United States to the misfortune of both countries. Without Western........

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