I firmly believe that, as with many things in life, there’s no clear-cut right or wrong in the Israel/Palestine conflict — sadly various mythologies that are taken as literal truth by the various sides in the conflict promise the territory in question to groups who appear not to be able to live together.

The original plans were ill-thought-through but at least allowed areas of land with majority Muslim populations to remain outside of Jewish control and vice versa. Unfortunately attacks from neighbouring countries put paid to that plan and left Israel in control of the west bank of the river Jordan and the Gaza Strip.

The US moved from being strongly against the League of Nations plan to, these days, providing much of Israel’s military capability and being the only Security Council country that does not regularly criticise Israel’s actions.

But this ridiculously quick summary of the history of modern Israel is nowhere near enough and I strongly recommend anyone who doesn’t know the full story reads it on Wikipedia or similar.

From the Telegraph website today:

With Palestinian medics saying the death toll had risen to more than 780, two Hamas rockets hit the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

It’s madness, it really is. You tickle a tiger often enough and it’s going to bite; now if the tiger has bitten the last thing you do is continue to tickle — you hope it speaks and you try and reason with it and apologise for your stupidity.

Hamas may not like Israel and may not believe it ought to exist, but the way to resolve this situation (not just the current crisis) is to engage — nothing, at all, will be achieved by murder and the Israelis deserve kudos for their patience with Hamas thus far.