Dear Don,

“During an aggressive search operation condemned by human rights groups, Israeli forces have arrested 335 persons affiliated with Hamas, according to data reported in the Times. They have also ransacked offices of charitable organizations and other groups , often confiscating and trashing their contents.”
http://timeswarp.org/2014/07/03/so-maybe-it-wasnt-hamas-after-all/

And here is a link to a letter titled 'Harm to the Palestinian population and collective punishment in Operation Brother's Keeper' written on behalf of the organizations Amnesty, B’Tselem, Gisha, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel, HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, Yesh Din, Adalah, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence.
http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/HR-organizations-letter-220614.pdf

They emphatically state “that these steps raise serious concerns about collective punishment, which is absolutely forbidden by international humanitarian law, and of disproportionate and unnecessary violations of basic rights under international law. It must be emphasized that actions intended to pressure and intimidate the population are utterly unacceptable.”

You say you are writing about Gaza not the West Bank and that you “do not know the ins and outs off the current imbroglio”. I'm hoping it is becoming clearer to you that the escalation of severe actions of the IDF and the PA against Hamas in the West Bank inevitably lead to the tragedy of 1500 souls being lost in Gaza. Attempting to disconnect the two is to exactly what Israel has striven to do from the beginning.

You postulate; “For Hamas to place its rockets where people live, near schools and hospitals, knowing that retaliation will occur, is simply to countenance the death of its own people. I can't support that. I am sure that it provides sympathy — nothing is more telling than the sight of injured and dead children.”

Cont..

cont..

It could just as easily be written; 'For Israeli to conduct such a brutal crackdown on Hamas including the kidnapping of its parliamentary representatives, knowing that retaliation will occur in the form of rockets fired from Gaza, is simply to countenance the death of its own people. I can't support that. I am sure that it provides sympathy — nothing is more telling than the sight of injured and dead children.'

Here is a link to a video I posted earlier showing the sustained bombing of a row of apartment buildings in Gaza over the period of an hour.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/israel-intensifies-gaza-assault-as-egyptian-mediators-revise-truce-plan-1.1881609#

Notice the tanks and other vehicles in the foreground. They are parked in open ground in plain sight without fear of being threatened by the weaponry of the resistance fighters. What do you think they would do if within less than a minute they could be identified by a drone and struck soon after by 500lb high explosive bomb? They certainly would not be in the open and as there is little in the way of forested areas then as a military commander I would have them retreat to a built up area. To do otherwise would be to see them all destroyed. Should this option only be open to Israeli commanders and not Hamas?

You say you “accept that you see things differently” but do you stop and think why? If this was any other situation where an oppressed, brutalised, blockaded people were being slaughtered in these numbers by those who had vastly superior weaponry and little desire for peace then we would be standing shoulder to shoulder condemning the killing, the kidnapping, the torture and the maiming together. The facts on the ground are not in dispute so you tell me why a seemingly reasonable and I suspect decent person like yourself would have such a diametrically different position on this conflict to myself and dare I say it most of the Western world?

Steele,

I guess that, as a historian and political scientist, I find it difficult to choose sides with respect to conflicts, especially here, where I don't have to. I gave my account of the history in the essay, I don't have a solution, and I don't think that one side is more 'right' than the other. Fighting and killing are what human beings do. They have done it, in form or another, ever since there were tribes. These contestants will have to sort it out for themselves.

But there are alternatives: a Palestine that is an accepted and respected state, which accepts that Israel is also a respected state; a Gaza that is not about sending rockets into Israel, which it has been doing for several years (what is the virtuous point?); an Israel that would not be spending 25 per cent of its GDP on defence if its neighbours accepted it as a proper neighbour; an Arab world that concentrated on improving the lives of its people rather than on inter-sect bloody conflicts and hostility to Israel; and so on.

They are my alternatives, and not all of them. But I am old enough to know that in domains like this one it is eventually pointless to try and persuade others. Each of us has to come to terms with the conflict in terms of our own history, philosophy of life, experience of the world and so on.

I see where you come from, and while it is not my view of things, I accept that it is right for you.

Dear Don,

We saw bloodlust of a people stirred by a conniving government that resulted in 1500 lives another people being lost under a rain of high tech weaponry before it was considered sated. Yet you cling to some sort of equivalence that is in complete denial of the facts.

You say you can't split them. I really am at a loss to contemplate what thought processes allow you to believe that.

Some here have a deep connection to Israel, some have a deep hatred of Muslims, others who are fundamentalist Christians who are firmly on the side of those who slaughtered so many men, women and children in the name of weakening Hamas. Others are ignorant of the facts and they struggle to understand the conflict therefore see both sides as mad as cut snakes. But you sir have the time, the skills, and the intellect to appreciate the rights and wrongs of the latest conflict yet you say there is not one more blame worthy than the other?

There is nothing nuanced or complicated about what has happened over the last few weeks. 1500 mostly civilians were blown apart in the most terrifying manner, thousands more were wounded and disfigured for life. Hamas had made moves to become closer to a unity government with Fatah. The tragic deaths of the three settler teenagers gave Israel an excuse to exert intolerable pressure on Hamas. In provoking Hamas Israel has gotten exactly what it wanted. The actions of the PA in working with the Israelis now means that any alliance between these two Palestinian groups is dust. The Israelis now have a reason not to ease the blockade of Gaza, to keep supporting settler expansions into the West Bank, and to stall indefinitely moves by the international community to prosecute for a two state solution.

If you sir manage to produce a different narrative that says there was not one side more culpable than the other in this latest conflict then may I respectfully advise you examine what you have had to ignore to produce it.

Don,

You may think one side is not 'more right than the other', but there is one side that is a whole lot more dead than the other.

And that's really about as complicated as it needs to be.

Dane and Steele,

If only it were so simple. Where do you start? A long time ago I taught a cause at university that examined the conflict in Northern Ireland. We quickly saw that there had been three hundred years of conflict, which extended from parents to children, each generation seeing a cause for more bloodshed in return for what had happened to it. At the end the class argued about solutions. There were none that seemed likely. In the Middle East the conflicts go back thousands of years.

Via email I am being accused of ignoring the facts, of being shallow, and of having pitifully inadequate knowledge, but there the anger comes from a pro-Israeli perspective. I try to be an analyst. It's not easy.