Seeming Utility = Reality: Futility

Yes, that was the formula for success in solving the seemingly intractable. Give up the land gained by conquest, albeit a conquest born of defence, and all would revert to normalcy and acceptance would be the order of the day. The unilateral action of desperation in clearing Israeli settlers out of Gaza proved otherwise and that is a great unkindness to what might-have-been. That is the reality of normalcy in the Middle East.

This was a difficult decision to finally arrive at, but one the outside world demanded as just and one the country's population for the most part was willing to try in an effort to attain some measure of stability, some assurances for the future of the country. Settlers were hauled out of their long-established communities, the richness of their lives there left behind, ever so reluctantly. The pain accomplished, the results were awaited.

Whatever was left intact which might have been of immense assistance to the Palestinians in establishing their own agricultural/horticultural greenhouse infrastructure, along with other structures (as, for example, a sacred house of worship) were destroyed. The former incrementally, by Palestinian brigands while other Palestinians attempted desperately to make the most of what they were given as a gift for the future; the latter immediately in a malignancy of revenge.

So what does it avail? Even when ceasefires between the antagonists are finally agreed upon, they are honoured hesitantly but impeccably on one side, and on the other there remains a semi-agreement to recognize the ceasefire, enabling the continual lobbing of Kassam rockets into Israeli border communities from the West Bank, while the Palestinian Authority can claim the control of militants is beyond their capacity.

Attempts to broker a final agreement between the two entities to solidify and make possible a Palestinian State; the State of Israel on the one hand, the Palestinian Authority claiming to represent the best interests and good governance of the Palestinian population on the other have been attempted time and again and teeter evermore on the cusp of possibility only to fall back into the chasm of impossibility.

Fear and repugnance, anger and resentment fuel both sides, but in a seemingly unequal manner. For beyond the cradle to the grave Palestinians nurse an implacable hatred of the intruder; taught as children to fear and hate the infidel Jews, as adults they then nurse resentment at their dreadful plight as perennial refugees making one step toward progress, then another backward into the abyss once more.

It is not as though Palestinians cannot learn to live amicably with Jews, for they have done so, and they do even now, when the conditions and the circumstances lend themselves to a civil quasi-unity of sorts. But it's the ages-old baggage of suspicion and tribal blood-lines, repression and regression of one against the other, that keep alive the enmity burning deep.

Palestinians appear on the face of it to be destined to remain in a protracted, perpetual state of arrested democratic development in favour of the more elemental primal embrace of tribal exclusion. The clear commitment to tribal warfare, internecine blood challenges claim the hearts and souls of too many Palestinians. It appears to be a blood sport that holds great appeal.

Pluralism, or anything remotely resembling it, seems destined never to become a reality. Palestinians appear incapable of accepting their own inner differences; there is nothing at all casual about the various outlooks and motivations which cleave the mindsets of those who adhere to Fatah and those which claim allegiance to Hamas. How then are they to accept Israelis as respected neighbours?

Death, not life, seems to be the sacred Holy Grail forever sought by Palestinians. Brutalism appears always to triumph over reasoned civility.