While Engelhardt's introduction lays appropriate stress on the US's role in creating chaos throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan, he arrives at the odd conclusion that Israel and the US have blown their chances at creating stability--as if this was ever their interest!
The vast Empire support given to the creation of Israel on Palestinian land and their continuing support ever since is obvious evidence that peace and stability never ranked high on the Empire agenda. While I think that Tolan's article accurately summarizes many of the facts leading up to the present crisis, I think that the Zionist agenda is much more than what he suggests:
...the destruction of Gazan neighborhoods and significant aspects of the area’s infrastructure should be seen as part of Israel’s larger objective: dividing Palestinians from one another and so deep-sixing the possibility of genuine self-determination. As early as 1973, Ariel Sharon, one of the founders of the Likud party and a champion of the settler movement, described his aim as putting so many settlements on the West Bank that they would become impossible to remove.I think that this, the complete cancellation of any independent Palestinian state, is only one step in a much large plan. There is strong evidence that the Zionist agenda has always been imperialist: to expand their control “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” This objective conflates well with the Empire's desire to control the Middle East and its fossil fuel resources.
