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Addressing the root causes

Jul 26,2014 - Last updated at Jul 26,2014

There are two reasons for the ongoing war in Gaza. The first is the long-standing Palestinian grief and sense of betrayal over the loss of their homeland in 1947-48 and the consequent repeated failures to resolve this grave injustice, especially after it was compounded by the loss of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1967. 

This made the Palestinians feel dispossessed; a feeling that not only persisted but also strengthened and deepened over the past six decades. 

I would call this primary reason the “original sin” that festered though the years and remained at the heart of the Palestinian hostility and animosity towards Israel and its Jewish people. This would be classified as the root cause of the ongoing conflict. 

The second immediate reason can be found in the recent chain of events that led to this, beginning last month with the kidnapping of three Israelis who were later found murdered. Israel arbitrarily accused Hamas of behind the killing of the three settlers, which set in motion other reactions including the brutal murder of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists. The chain of actions and reactions led to Israel’s targeting and killing of three Hamas leaders in Gaza in an aerial attack and created the right environment for sparking the latest round of armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. 

The pent up frustrations and anger of the Palestinians over the failure to resolve their decades long suffering made them “ripe” for an explosion at the first instance. All it took for Hamas to start pounding Israel with its new arsenal of rockets was the killing of some of their brethren in arms. The rest is now history. 

With both sides sustaining human and material losses, their respective terms for a truce, much less a permanent ceasefire, have hardened. Hamas wants nothing less than a complete Israeli withdrawal from any recently occupied part of Gaza, the unequivocal lifting of the state of siege on their “country” and the release of Palestinian prisoners that Israel had earlier promised to do but reneged at the last minute. 

For its part, Israel wants nothing less than the complete demilitarisation of Gaza and the dismantling of all Hamas rockets and means of their production, and, of course, the closure of all underground tunnels dug by Hamas to reach the heartland of Israel.  

Against this backdrop, the picture for Gaza looks grim. Bridging the gap between Israel and Hamas is not in the cards. The settlement of the immediate crisis requires returning to the basics by addressing the root causes of the entire Palestinian file. This objective remains elusive. 

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