The wheel of tragedy turns again in Gaza. Eleven dead in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. And what of the ceasefire, that fleeting promise of respite?
Dead, as always. The headlines scream urgency, but the truth is tediously predictable: this is a cycle as old as the empires of antiquity. Rome had its Carthage.
We have our Gaza. The actors change, but the script remains. There is a terrible, wearying familiarity to these reports.
Each round of violence is met with a flurry of diplomatic outrage, a cascade of condemnations, and then the slow, grinding return to the status quo ante. The ceasefire is not abandoned. It is merely suspended.
It is a political convenience, a bargaining chip, not a genuine desire for peace. The Palestinian Authority condemns. Israel defends.
The United States calls for restraint. Hamas fires rockets. Israel retaliates.
And the civilians, the poor souls caught between the millstones, they die. This is not a conflict with a solution. It is a conflict with a rhythm.
It is a clash of two uncompromising nationalisms, each convinced of its divine or historic right. One side invokes the memory of the Holocaust, the other the Nakba. Neither can forgive.
Neither can forget. The international community wrings its hands, but its hands are tied by strategic alliances and domestic politics. We pretend that a two-state solution is viable when neither side truly wants it.
We pretend that the settlement project can be frozen when it continues apace. We pretend that Hamas can be defeated when it is an idea, a grievance, a faith. The language of diplomacy fails because it assumes rational actors.
But this is not rational. This is tribal. This is civilisational.
To understand Gaza, one must read the Book of Judges, not the Oslo Accords. The airstrikes will continue. The rockets will fly.
The ceasefires will be agreed and broken. And the world will look on, tutting and sighing, until the next cycle of violence erupts. The only thing that changes is the body count.
