A Piece of the Picture

Peter Brookes captures one part of the insanity that drives the Israeli v Palestinian conflict - the fact that Hamas deliberately uses civilians sites including hospitals, schools and mosques from which to launch their missiles which are fired wildly into Israel in the hope of striking a target, any target, up to and including Israeli or other perfectly innocent civilians.

Now Hamas justify this behaviour because they say that to all intents and purposes Gaza is still under occupation because Israel, with the support of Egypt, control land, sea and air access to Gaza which is not unreasonably described as the largest open air prison in the world.

Yet how stupid would it be for Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza, if it simply leads to Hamas building bigger, more powerful and deadly rockets as the basis for continuing to launch strikes against their Israeli neighbours, whose right to exist they refuse to recognise anyway.

The other side of the coin is, of course, that the peace process aimed at establishing a viable Palestinian state which is willing to liven peace with Israel - the so-called two state solution - is dead in the water at the moment, which it has been for years effectively, and this is made much worse by Israel continuing to build new settlements on Palestinian land in defiance of the United Nations.

Speaking as someone who has long supported the Palestinian cause and a 'two state' solution, I still have no time for the rocket launching strategy of Hamas.

Because the tactics of Hams amount to the same thing as civil rights campaigners in the 1960s firing rockets into nearby 'white populated' civilian areas of America - or anti-Apartheid protesters doing the same thing in 1980s South Africa.

Terrorist tactics won't bring about peace; nor will Israel's military campaign against Gaza - a political solution is and always has been the only game in town.