Let’s do a Vulcan mind meld on the next topic: the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Ben Birnbaum has written a comprehensive assessment of the peace overtures undertaken by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, at the behest of the State Department representatives, Martin Indyk and John Kerry. It appears here in the New Republic.

Ben Birnbaum’s piece about peace

Clearly I am no expert on anything related to these two countries, their policies, attitudes and means of getting through life. But maybe that’s a good thing: the experts in all these areas have had no success whatsoever in getting these recalcitrant players to work together and stop killing innocents on both sides. So with that understanding, in I’ll plunge.

I know: by now you’ve become inured to seeing pictures of women and children in Gaza wailing about their lost loved ones. I get that, gentle reader. A naive person would ask, “Why don’t they just leave?” That’s likely what that same individual said about residents of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, in assessing the aftermath of Katrina. But if you are a refugee, a person scrounging for her daily living, or someone asked to leave their home containing multiple generations, it isn’t that simple.

First and foremost: where does she go? How does she get there? Travel is severely restricted in Gaza, because of suicide bombers and the justified fear of attacks. Even if civilians could leave, their hard scrabble existence would be eliminated, leaving them to the potential for a worse fate than braving Israeli bombs and now a ground attack. So I get that.

What about the other side? One can sympathize to some degree with their desire to root out Hamas from Gaza, eliminating the tunnels that allow them access under the wall built by Israel. The wall was built to insulate Israel from the mayhem brought to their homes, streets and shops by hapless, hopeless individuals willing to blow themselves up, rather than live in these current conditions. Apparently the wall strategy didn’t work too well. It never does, neither around Israel to keep the bombers out nor between the continental US and adjacent countries to the south. But I say, acknowledging the irony: the wall created the basis for Hamas to attack Israel. But not for the reasons you might think.

Here’s the point I’d like to make, that somewhat echoes yesterday’s post. Here it is, again: “Economics have been the true cause of every major clash of geographies, throughout history.” I think I’ll embroider a sampler containing that phrase, because it is so true, when you can get down to the heart of these conflicts.

Here’s a piece from a ‘down-under’ newspaper, reprinted from The Times of Israel with some good visuals added.

The Real Deal Going on Between Israel/Gaza/Egypt

The story details how Hamas has been surviving economically as a result of the tunnels dug under the wall, leading to both Israel and Egypt via the Sinai (see map below). According to the article, 40% of their income came from taxes and tolls on those tunnels, which apparently numbered between 350 and 400, with up to 1200 entrances on the Palestinian side. But then it was Al-Qaeda that screwed the pooch. They used the tunnels to infiltrate the Egyptian side and killed 16 Egyptian military officers. What was that all about? Later. Suffice it to say, that gave Egypt the justification to start addressing the tunnel issue and shutting them down. Then when Morsi and the Brotherhood were overthrown in a coup d’etat by General Sisi, the Egyptians went at it tooth and claw. So tunnels closed down: no money for Hamas, prices in Gaza begin to skyrocket, and you have all the makings of a violent confrontation.

While all this was going on, Kerry, Indyk, Abbas, Tzipi Livni, Erekat, and various others were negotiating a peace that they could not manage, not any of them. Window dressing, you say? No, I don’t think so. Kerry and the Americans were naive – maybe uninformed? But I feel sure Netanyahu knew, and played them. Then three Israeli kids get killed, and then a Palestinian teen dies a sordid death at the hands of Israeli vigilantes. Everybody jumps in, and then you see the rockets’ red glare.

So what’s the solution? What’s the solution to any conflict? The people causing the mayhem must be listened to and their issues addressed. Everybody wants to earn a living, and the ghetto called Gaza, recently compared to the Warsaw ghetto, in some universe has a right to be upset. So does Israel. But both sides are so busy explaining why their rights trump the other’s, there is no capacity or motivation for resolution.

Here’s the really terrible irony in all this. While they’re busy fighting one another over a tiny piece of territory, the militant wing of Sunni Islam is taking control over the Syria/Iraq/Jordan geography, in an attempt to consolidate their holdings. They’re doing all this under the watchful eye of the Saudis, who keep their hands clean but tacitly acknowledge and support their efforts. At the end of their rainbow is a caliphate that has no room for either Shia Iran or Infidel Israel. The real boogie man is out there, taking large sums of money from Iraqi central bank branches in the Sunni Triangle, and dispatching or expelling non-believers like Christians from their territory. When they’re done with that, then it’ll be Iran and finally Israel. That day will arrive, and Israel will wish for the gold old days when it was just the Palestinians in Gaza they had to be concerned about.

POST SCRIPT: I did a little research regarding the relative sizes of Gaza and the West Bank, compared to Israel. The West Bank covers 2180 square miles. Gaza covers 139 square miles. Israel covers 8019 square miles. If you add them all together, the West Bank is 21% of the total. Gaza is 1.4% of the total. So the 1.4% is browbeating the country that’s 15 times bigger than it is. And Israel is smaller than New Jersey. So that makes Gaza the size of Detroit, and the West Bank about the size of Delaware. So Detroit is driving New Jersey to waste blood and treasure in a war that cannot be won by either side. Go figure…and now the citizens of the piece the size of Delaware are rising up against New Jersey in sympathy with Detroit. Makes you stop and think for at least a half a second, yes? Never mind…