“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire

I’ve listened to a lot of opinions on Israel and the territories. I don’t know what should be done there but I’m on the side of anyone who is effective at bringing the situation closer to peace than it was before. Currently I don’t see anyone both willing and capable of doing that.

Now usually when I hear an opinion on the situation from an Irish person, its pro Palestinian. Its understandable as its rather easy to relate to given our history. Their viewpoint is somewhat admirable and hopefully it will lead to some money going to aid workers in Gaza.

The problem I find with their arguments is that they are willing to place full responsibility on this entity known as Israel as if it has a single mind while when discussion Palestine it becomes a large number of people with a minority of extremists who have allowed themselves to be consumed in righteous anger towards the aforementioned single entity occupier.

In reality Israel is a state, the actions of which are driven by a population and that population are scared and angry. Angry at what and who they have lost and scared that it will happen again. The same situation exists in Palestine.

Generally the solutions I hear to the situation are unilateral actions on the part of Israel. Pull back to the 1967 or 48 borders, stop invading, tear down the fence, ignore the rockets and everything will be OK given time. I can see a certain logic to it, if you make life better for the Palestinians then they will have less motivation to attack Israel. I imagine this list would gain the response “seems like a good start” from most commentators I’ve heard on the situation. But its not me that needs to be convinced of this, its the Israeli who has to travel the bus to work everyday. How do you convince her that tearing down the security fence which has put an end to the suicide attacks will eventually make her country a safer place to live? How about the man who’s daughter was blown up in a restaurant? There may only be at most 10s of thousands of people in Israel who have pictures in their homes of people blown up by bombs but if you live in Israel you’ve at least met one and everyone has just left that cafe minutes before it exploded or the day before.

Fact is, this conflict is going to take a long time. I have no suggestions or solutions, I just recommend that everyone whether you are pro Israeli or pro Palestine, that you take a careful look at what will actually bring peace to that region before you open your mouth.

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