The Rafa Gate

 

 

Subject: The Rafa Gate

The picture at the Rafa Gate, the entry point between Gaza and Egypt suddenly changed as I watched an Aljazeera program based on the impasse in Gaza. Suddenly a man came forward with a key and unlocked the gate and the couple of hundred who were waiting patiently gathered up their belongings to walk through to the Egyptian officials there to process them. There was one man on a donkey and cart who to me represented the time warp of history, the crossing of boarders as generations of his people had crossed this and many boarders, perhaps he had been caught out when the war started and hadn’t been able to get back into Egypt
Humanity was seen at its lowest point last night as a refugee camp in Gaza was bombed with multiple Palestinians Casualties. The cause of the bombing was the location of a top Palestinian official in the camp and the need to take him out.
A stalemate has been reached with claim and counter claim as to whose fault and where the blame for this bloody struggle lies. Speak to a Jewish person and they are resolute that it’s payback for the massacre of the young Israeli party goers and hostage taking of Jews from the Israeli settler homes. Speak to much of the Arab world and it’s the thorn in the Arab side of the state of Israel and Israel's resolute determination to defend itself irrespective of what it has to do.
The tone of the personalities on each side are different.  On the one the master of his destiny assumes the hectoring tone of self awareness by being by far the stronger militarily and having the implicit faith in the support of the Americans. The other is the subservience of being, for generations the compliant underdog who was poorly treated by the colonial powers in the early part of the 20th century and who have since national statehood emerged been engaged in conflict with each other. Their only unifying cause has been a dislike/hatred of Isreal which, apart from a biblical dispute should not, it seems to me have generated so much ire between the surrounding Aran nations.
Is it Islam and its jihadi fervour to punish the infidel for past incursions. Is it  Jewish biblical doctrine, the doctrine of divine right which also plays a part as a religious element in Islamic teaching of who can claim the divine right to be the voice of god. Hamas are but one offshoot of the jihadi culture which have fought many wars on the basis of righting holy wrongs. ISIS in Africa, Al-Qaeda in the Far East still wage war and have become deeply embedded in the fabric of many nations.  It seems there is no end in sight.