CEASEFIRE, the game of Mid-East Peace:Just in time for Holiday Season

Just in time for Holiday Season Sales, Hamas has announced the re-release of the terrorists favorite toy, Ceasefire, the game Mid-East Peace. It has been a few months since we played so let me give you a refresher course on how the game works.

Each round starts with a Terrorist leader announcing a ceasefire, well sort of, remember Oslo? Recall those promises to remove the call for the destruction of Israel from the PLO’s charter? Ever wonder the destruction of Israel is still in the PLO charter years later? The reason is that a key part of the game’s opening move. Terrorist leadership has to convince the world it wants peace, but to use fuzzy language to give it an out. In the case of Gaza, Abbas called Olmert to tell him:

“That he had received an agreement from all the different Palestinian factions to the ceasefire and in response "requested that Israel would stop all military operations in the Gaza Strip, and withdraw all its forces from there."

Israel accepted a Palestinian cease-fire to go in effect Sunday morning, and will stop military operations in Gaza in return for an end to all Palestinian violence, including rocket fire, tunneling, and suicide bombers, the Prime Minister's Office announced Saturday night.

According to reports, there was no discussion of the return of the kidnapped Soldier, Carpel. Gilad Shalit, the reason the IDF offensive started

Cool game right? Once the Palestinian side makes its opening move governments across the world practically trip over their own underwear to get a seat at the game. Usually Israel need a few days to make sure they are going to play, to see if they will get some enjoyment from the game. But for some reason not the Present Government. This Israeli PM, Olmert thinks this game is like Golf, the low score wins. Based on published reports Olmert has abandoned Cpl Shalit to Hamas, just as he abandoned the two soldiers to Hezbollah, Echud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev when he played this past summer

The next step in the game is to invite the US to play The US has an important role at the table, we bring to the game a combination of threats and Jewish guilt (hey if Jewish guilt doesn’t work in Israel, it won’t work on anyone). The purpose of the US prodding is to pressure Israel to make concessions that the US Government would not make in the same situation, namely give in to terrorists, This part of the game is called "do as I say not what I do”

Another part of the Ceasefire Game is called Jewish Blood is Cheap (France’s favorite). The France has developed a full-blown game out of this rule, called Liberty, Equality, Fraternity---but No Jews! In the Lebanon version of the game, France lets Hezbollah rearm right under their nose (see Time Magazine confirms: Hezbollah rearmed on Israel Matzav) but threatens Israeli planes who try to keep an eye on the terrorist threat. This section of the game is a world favorite, In fact being able to play “Jewish Blood is cheap” is a requirement to get ahead at the UN, CNN, the NY Times and many other worldwide organizations. It is all the rage across Europe, US college campuses, and on websites such as Move on and the Daily Kos.

Once the verbal part of the game is up and running, Israel begins the hard choice concession stage. The concession segment is of the game probably the most interesting. You see in the concession stage, only Israel gets to play. Working on the advice (and prodding) of its best friend the US and a new team called the Quartet, Israel is make territorial concessions without getting any from the other side. With Oslo, it worked like this: Israel had to give up most of Judea and Samaria, and the top of the Temple Mount. In addition, every Jew that lives in the newly created Palestinian territories has to leave (no Jews allowed). The Palestinians get a state, control of Jewish Holy sites, such as the Temple Mount, Joseph and Rachel’s tombs and guns supplied by Israel.

Don’t think that the game is totally one sided, the terrorists do get to give up something too. They have to give up some of their people. You see they insist that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs get to move to Israel, to insure that the country no longer viable as a Jewish democracy.

Now comes the cool part, just when the concession stage is nearing its end when everyone thinks that peace will be at hand, the Palestinian side will begin to back out. At first, this is a negotiation move. The American side becomes so afraid to lose credibility that they become even more desperate for one-sided Israeli concessions. This was big during the Clinton administration.

The game ends when an Israeli leader visits a Jewish holy site (G-d Forbid!), giving the Palestinians the out that they were looking for, and an excuse to start the violence.

People in the US or the Quartet, are saying that this version is different, they say that Abbas and his Hamas cronies are bored with the same old rules and want to play differently. To be honest, I think we are all tired of the same old thing, and would welcome peace. However looking at the way Hamas, Hezbollah and the world community has acted of the past few months it seems like the beginning of same old tired board game.

This game is reccomended for all ages, I understand that Wal-Mart will be packing the games along with the Nazi T-shirts they have been selling

UPDATE: Two more Kassam rockets landed in Israel on Sunday morning, bringing the total number of rockets aimed at Israel since a cease-fire agreement with the Palestinian government went into effect earlier in the day to five.