Gaza is an urban postage stamp-sized 25km by 5km strip of buildings and desert. It’s also one of the world’s more enthusiastic war zones. About 2 million people live there, work there, pay a fortune for retail, and have regular options to get killed there.
The current violence is the usual mess of stories of incidents, misery, and unnecessary deaths. “Middle East peace” is a contradiction in terms. The inhabitants get to suffer through whatever brilliant geopolitical atrocities happen to occur. Syria was reduced to an open wound by the same process. Middle East politics is about mass murder, whoever’s doing it.
This is Death By Policy. Policies kill, or create situations where people get killed. The current issue is partly the Al Aqsa mosque, one of the most contentious pieces of land in the region. Religions kill, too, and on a routine basis. Claims and counter-claims have killed a lot of people in the last few decades.
The Cold War upgunned a regional issue into a global issue. Supporting the Israelis or the Arabs was advanced theory back then, and look what happened. Now, it’s pure cynicism and exploitation.
Middle East politics went global on 911. Roaming nutcases were the new black, for quite a while. It’s part of the natural escalation of irrationality into ever more extreme forms. Being more fanatical gets the Brownie points on both sides. Better still, you can be clueless and get paid for it.
The Middle East is also still one of the world’s largest and most repulsive arms markets, worth billions. These guys don’t get killed. They make lots of money out of this war zone. Nations support one side or another, and the weapons sales just roll in like room service.
Your cup of coffee, if you’re an arms sales-thing, arrives courtesy of decades of war. A few people probably died or were maimed to make that cup of coffee for you. Happy? You seem to be. Vermin.
“Salaam” and “Shalom” are meaningless in this environment. You may want peace, but there’s no way of getting it. There is no peace and can be no peace. No attempt is made to solve anything.
Both sides have created the same insoluble problem for each other. The issue is the right to exist; nobody will back down. On the basis of this self-inflicted issue, both sides have failed miserably, and probably deliberately, to achieve any sort of credible peace.
World view? What world view?
The world now has some skin in this hideous game. Refugees from the Middle East are in every country on Earth. The foreign policy options for nations are to support one group of their own people at the expense of the other. That’s not even an option. It’s a no-win situation at best, punctuated by atrocities.
Then there’s the export of terrorism and propaganda from the Middle East. That’s been helpful. Lots of attacks on people trying to live their lives worldwide, courtesy of Middle East Syndrome. Massacres here and there, presumably for the ambience. Ain’t this just too cute for words?
We “appreciate the situation”, we say. Like hell. We can’t even think of a rationale for it. That’s because by definition decades of war may have a reason, but it can’t be a good reason.
The actual world view is more likely to be that it’s had enough of Middle East politics forevermore. If the entire Middle East and its homicidal mania sank into the sea tomorrow, there wouldn’t be too many heartaches around the world.
Current situation
You may have heard this before a few million times:
- The Palestinians are still treated like dirt or less. They’re as inexcusably homeless as the West’s growing totally unnecessarily homeless.
- Gaza is essentially one large concentration camp. (Any other expression would be welcome, but what the hell else could you call it?)
- There is no peace and never was. There never will be, if the vested interests have their way. The weapons may be silent occasionally, but the war continues.
- Everybody and their disgusting political pets has a stake, often financial, and if not financial, political, in keeping the situation going.
That’s the situation since 1947. Names may change, borders may change, different things might get blown up, but the situation hasn’t changed at all.
The irony is that both sides have much bigger problems. For the Palestinians, it’s a mix of survival and massive injustice to their rights as human beings. Where’s their economy? Where are the basics of a liveable life? Where did their future go? Usually into some damn meaningless press release.
For the Israelis, it’s a range of threats, ironically, not from the Palestinians. The madness now extends to nukes and other wholesome activities. It’s a direct result of escalating the never-to-be-solved situation.
But don’t worry – Like maggots around an open wound, the world’s parasites will thrive as the graves fill. Think of it as a way of supporting all those deserving billionaires. The deaths and destruction won’t even shift their dandruff. As usual.
