If they were school kids, and if the consequences of this latest round of violence weren’t so tragic, you’d spank Hamas on the backside for being idiotically pigheaded and send the Israelis home from school for bullying. When Hamas notified Israel that they were terminating their truce last Friday; and punctuated that announcement by firing rockets into Israel and threatening a wave of suicide attacks they essentially challenged the school bully to a fight in front of his buddies – a challenge Israel felt it could not turn a blind eye to.
Every time these two tribes go to war, analysts everywhere rush to proclaim the situation so complex that whatever position is taken, there are a dozen counter positions - and thereby casting as inevitabile or intractable the tragedy that follows. The sooner the ordinary people of both sides force their leaders to acknowledge their wrong doings and negotiate a compromised agreement the better. Hamas has proven once again they are good for nothing except prolonging misery for the Palestinians by constant fighting – having failed completely to govern Gaza - and Israel continues to flout the international conventions (as problematic as they were) that defined the borders of a the Palestinian state in 1947. By Israel maintaining a constant state of war against the people with whom they share their geography, their only dividend has been the creation of new generations of Palestinian youths whose minds have been perverted by hatred and loathing towards them.
Taking a side in this dispute is not part of the solution…indeed it is the heart of the problem. Both sides are wrong and there is absolutely no good outcome possible in this unending conflict without negotiation and compromise. If the good citizens of Gaza and Israel cannot see this and force their leaders to rise above their stubborness, then they too must bear responsibility for the thousands of innocent lives that will be lost as a result. It was the political theorist Mr Edmund Burke who is credited with the phrase "all that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." This applies equally to Palestinians and Israelis. Quite apart from all the weighty concerns of morality and civilized behavior, the truth is that war almost never solves anything and certainly never results in enduring peace.
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