The most closely followed news today for me is the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. I read the news with a heavy heart. The Jewish-Palestinian question has become such a tragic one that appears to be beyond a solution in the foreseeable future. We can only pray for the mercy of the Lord that He move the hearts of all those in power to bring love and peace to these two peoples. From the human perspective, I cannot see how this could happen.
There is a spectrum of views in Israel towards the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people. Of course there are the "orthodox" Jews who are aiming to build an Israel according to the "biblical" promises. And the hardliners who believe that military supremacy is the only reliable way to protect Israel from its hostile neighbors. On the other hand, there are quite a lot of people who understand the suffering and desperation of the Palestinians, especially the Gazans. I believe that they do wish to improve the conditions in Gaza and look forward to a two-state solution. The present defense minister of Israel, Ehud Barak has once said, in response to a question about what he would do if he were a Gazan Palestinian, that he would have been a terrorist. Reading some of the articles on the Israeli newspapers, we can recognise that a number of Israelis do understand and sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza. The tragedy is that these people are forced into this war hoping that the path to a negotiated peace could be brought about by defeating Hamas in Gaza.
The strategy taken up by Hamas is plain and obvious. They have no real intention to establish a long term peaceful co-existence with Israel. Temporary peace/calm is just a way to buy time so that they can build up their power and one day they will overwhelm Israel militarily. They have never fully stopped rocket attacks of Israel during the 6-month "truce". Though they claim that the reason for their refusal to renew the truce was that Israel had not lifted the blockade on Gaza, there will not be any long term truce even if the Gazan crossings were all opened. Opening the crossing will only help them consolidate their political power and further expand their military abilities. A war with Israel will finally come. A two-state solution has never been their intention. The intransigence of Hamas helps the hardliners in Israel to justify this war and weakens the positions of the Israeli moderates.
On the other hand, it is not difficult to understand why Hamas has become popular among the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority under Fatah is corrupt. We can see the corruption and impotence of Fatah through the ease of taking Gaza by Hamas in 2007. The security forces of Fatah simply melted away. In nearly 40 years of struggle, the PA under Fatah has not been able to improve the condition of Palestinians by negotiating with Israel. The Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza continued to expand. When Israel has the upper hand in military might, she has little motivation to give up what she has already got. Few were willing to recognise the injustice of driving out the Palestinians from their homes when Israel was established.
It appears that we have come to the point of no return. The "success"of Hezbollah in 2006 and the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza seemed to have suggested to Hamas and its supporters that their violent strategy was working. Only when people come to recognise that no one party can emerge as a victor militarily that they will be willing to pursue a solution through negotiation. This time may come one day, after a huge number of people have lost their lives. That is the tragedy we are facing in the MIddle East today.
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