Israel and Gaza again

The scale of the destruction in Gaza, from all reports, is almost incomprehensible. I have written about this before but it still both irritates and distresses me. It irritates me because of the seeming inability or unwillingness of the parties to resolve the matter and allowing it to fester, apparently, indefinitely. I am distressed by the senselessness of the destruction and the appalling loss of innocent lives – some Hamas operatives were certainly killed but so also were hundreds of innocent men, women and children. What for? What have the Israelis achieved? Rockets are still being fired into Israel on a daily basis; the Israelis are still bombing tunnels and other targets; the Palestinians in Gaza are still without housing, water, sewage, electricity, means of employment or adequate supplies of food and medicine – and Hamas is still the elected government of the people of Gaza.

I am also amazed at the Israelis apparent lack of understanding of human nature. As I have said before many times, Jews have been persecuted for millennia; has this altered or affected their determination to once again have and preserve their own ‘homeland’ of Israel? Why do they think that the Palestinians will be any less determined or show any less fortitude in their desire to return to their own homeland of Palestine?

Again, so that no one can misunderstand the situation, the Palestinians will be satisfied with nothing less than justice. Every person’s birthright is to have somewhere to call home. The Palestinians were deprived of that right in 1947 (the birth of the State of Israel) by the international community – principally Britain, France and America.

What the Palestinians have been trying to do for more than sixty years is to draw attention to their plight and to get some redress. I disapprove of the methods they use (or have used) but then neither do I agree with the eye for an eye methods used by the Israelis – God knows how many thousands of people have been killed or injured in the fighting between these two Semitic ‘tribes’. They both worship God and a basic tenet of both their faiths is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – or words expressing a similar sentiment. Yet after some sixty years nothing has been achieved!

I would remind all my readers that the Palestinians are using terrorist tactics first developed by the Israelis and used against the British with the destruction of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22nd July 1946 when a bomb placed in the basement by a specially trained team, from the right-wing Zionist underground movement, the Irgun, demolished part of the hotel, killing 91 and injuring a further 46 people. (Israelis celebrated the 60th anniversary of this event!)

The Israelis blew up the hotel to draw attention to their plight. Sound distressingly familiar? Injustice is the root cause of all the present problems in the Middle East. Using force of arms instead of reason is no way to arrive at a just solution.