So this post is a bit late in coming, but I guess there’s never a bad time to celebrate peace (however temporary it may be)!!!

Yes, both Israel and Hamas have announced their own unilateral ceasefires. And now my classes are back on track, Guys and Dolls is no longer performing in a tiny bomb shelter and I once again can walk down the street with my iPod on full blast!

The country is moving forward too. On Feb 10th Israelis will head to the polls to vote for a new prime minister and governing coalition. Unfortunately, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party seem to be in the lead, and his election will most likely thwart any hopes for a peace agreement to be reached in the near future.

I suppose that possibility had already been “severely injured” in the war; nevertheless, a Bibi election could prove to be the final nail in the coffin. His views are well known – he holds much disdain for a two-state solution and indeed, as my friend and fellow MAPMES student Ellis Weintraub recently put it, Bibi’s economic peace plan shows that he regards Arabs as mere “oriental scenery.”

In other words, Bibi dismisses Palestinians as a group of people who can easily be manipulated into slaving away for Israel and abandoning their aspirations for a homeland once the country begins to inundate them with Western luxuries.

But Bibi will be getting a rude awakening, for this “innovative” approach didn’t work for his political inspiration Moshe Dayan and it certainly won’t work for him.

Yet Israeli public opinion has a habit of fluctuating dramatically in times of war and peace, so it is still too early to call who will emerge victorious. I’m rooting for Tzipi Livni; out of all the candidates, she seems the most committed to knackering out a peace solution (the fact that she played a major role in past talks only strengthens her credibility). Plus I have to give her bonus points for being a woman. Chicks before…well, you get the idea.

To bring my war experience full circle, here are the links to my latest news reports:

CNN:
iReport for CNN Jan 26 part 2
iReport for CNN Jan 26 Part 1

WEWS News Channel 5, Cleveland:
Student in Israel Talks About Impact of Ceasefire

Now let’s all pray that this ceasefire sticks!