The lights of the Biblical town of Jericho flicker like fireflies across the Dead Sea from where I am safely ensconced in a Jordan Valley resort. The hotel is full because of an influx of well-heeled refugees from the war in Lebanon a few hours away. 
It is in this context I think about that war, and also about happenings in Ukraine that have to disturb anyone with an emotional or business interest in the country. I have both, having been in the region for 12 years.
Ukraine, the Middle East. There really are no parallel lines of thoughts, merely those artificially manufactured due to time and space, or better put, my time, a vacation, and my space, a desert kingdom. The only significant factor in both is missed opportunity.
The last time I visited Jordan was 27-years ago, and my boss, then Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd was the President's emissary trying to keep the Middle East Peace accord together. Obviously, in both the short and long runs, we failed miserably.
Unlike my country, America, I do not take sides, and while I sympathize with the Biblical point of view of the Israelis, I also sympathize with the historical plight of the Palestinians who were uprooted from their homes 58 years ago.
To put the issue strictly in terms of terrorists, in this case the Hezbollah, is to suggest there is no root cause to the problem and that it is in some way merely religious extremists at work. You have to give more than a passing nod to the fact that these are folks wanting to reclaim land they believe theirs.
It is also to ignore the fact that a man I met in 1979, the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachen Begin, was a ringleader (terrorist some might say) in blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946 that claimed 91 lives. In that case, he was leading an extremist Israeli group, Irgun that was fighting to reclaim a homeland.
There are ironies here.
There will be no resolution to the Middle East conflict until all realize the Palestinians must have and should have a homeland. In this regard, I believe that Syria, who the United States has trouble mentioning without violent convulsions, is a key. It always has been.
Issues are rarely black and white, and that is particularly true in Ukraine.
I was up late last night, but obviously not late enough. It is only the next day that I hear that the ashes of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine are being scattered to the wind. The fellow who was demonized as a thug by many has again become prime minister.
From afar, I can be dispassionate about events. The fact is I was an accidental tourist during the Orange Revolution, upholding a certain informal neutrality as a company because we had a couple of employees in Kyiv who supported the blue side.
It does not bother me that Victor Yanukovych is prime minister. He apparently won it fair and square, took the power away from an administration that stepped in every pothole along the path to total confusion the last two years.
The big winner, I believe we shall soon find out, is not Yanukovych but the lady who would be prime minister but for the incompetence of the administration, Yulia Tymoshenko. Now she is the beefy and beautiful opposition,
The time to be in opposition is when you have a government made up of people who can't possibly agree on anything, and I some how doubt that the folks in the new coalition government could agree between paper and plastic bags at the local market.
My concern is not the new government, and certainly not the fact that issues such as NATO and the European Union will not be front and center. What bothers me most is the people of Ukraine were once again cheated.
Previously, corrupt government has cheated them. This time, incompetent government cheated them.
It is hard to decide which is worse.
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