Hamas and Israel: Take no sides

As most of you well know, it has now been over 48 hours since Israel retaliated against Hamas's continued barrages of mortar and rocket attacks with air strikes, killing over 300 and injuring over 600 palestanians as of this moment. Hamas, of course, has publicly and officially vowed to retaliate with more mortar and rocket attacks in return, and the 70-something attacks on Israel over the last 2 days are proof that he is dead serious. The UN, as well as many individual countries, have been urging both countries to cease the violence and find a peaceful solution.

I don't know about you, but this situation has me quite aggravated. The reason I am writing this today is because of a PBS interviw I saw with both Hamas and Israli representative officials. Instead of making genuine efforts at acheiving peace, all they cared about was establishing a situation in which their country(?) held the upper hand. Other than the blatant selfishness and unwillingness to compromise, what has me so aggravated? Well, let look a little deeper in to the situation here (from my point of view, of course.)

The situation started a few years back, when Hamas decidedly took over the Gaza strip area.

Currently, Palestine is divided in to two areas, known as the Gaza strip and the West bank. Interestingly enough, the West bank is actually on the east side, while the Gaza strip is on the west side, with Israel occupying considerable space between the two. Israel also controlls the sea and air space surrounding the Gaza Strip. Why?

Well, before Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip, it was under the rule of a united arab government which disbanded later when Egypt decided there was no point to it. It was this power vacuum that allowed Hamas to take controll. But what's important here is not that, but who had control of the region before the Arab government. Can you guess?

Israel. That's right. According to some agreement that I am not very knowledgeable about, the arab government allowed Israel to excersie control over the region until recent years, when Israel pulled its forces out in accordance with the agreement.

So what's the deal? Well, the Gaza strip area was and still is a highly disputed area, and Israel is reluctant to relenquish control of that area to the Palestinians. The entire area is walled and sectioned off, and there are guards surrounding the entire perimeter. I gather it's not as bad on the side that borders Egypt, but most of it borders Israel, so you can only imagine how strict they are being in maintaining control. Israel does not recognize Hamas as a government and insists they step down, and are willing to impose significant sanctions on the country to achieve their goals. Since Israel controls the sea and air space, as well as most of the borders, this isn't too hard to achieve.

The problem here is that Palestinians, and of course the the extremist Hamas government, are extremely unhappy with Israel to begin with. In fact, unless I'm wrong, Hamas actually doesn't recognize Israel as a sovereign entity. To understand this, we need to look a little in to the history of Israel.

Israel as we know it was founded in 1948, after WWII. How? Well, in a nutshell, the Jews basically used other wordly super powers that they had significant influence on such as Great Britain and the US to kick out Palestinians from what is "supposed to be" their land. Of course, it's actually much more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Israel wanted to have it's own country, and it did what it had to do to get it. Palestinians weren't particularly happy about the idea, but what could they do? And so began the hate-hate relationship, and it continues to this day. This is what underlies the current conflict.

Israel knows the hatred that palestanians and Hamas has for them, and it is a threat to their sovereignty. Of course they want to get rid of the threat, especially if it keeps shooting rockets and killing civilians every day. On the flip side, Hamas wants to get rid of these parasites that came in at took over it's peoples land. See a solution? Because I don't.

So, back to what aggravates me! I see a couple possible solutions that can make the situation better, since a permanent solution doesn't look possible at the moment. Problem is that I also know they aren't realistic. For example, I believe the situation could be alleviated greatly if Israel gets down on its knees and apologizes to everyone for taking over their land, causing them great discomfort and inconvenience, and promising to do everything they can to make up for it in any way possible. But we all know that's not happening. Another is for Hamas to grow up and deal with reality by making a deal with Isreal that he plans to stick to. Againt, not likely.

So, what does that leave? Probably a UN proposed resolution with no real good permanent solution.