Israel and Palestine

To be blunt and heartless I'm not paying much attention to this - A bombs B who had bombed A who had bombed B gets to the point where you want to just slap everyone involved. It would be easy to start moaning about the creation of Israel, but as DT points out "We are where we are." so that's where we've got to start with.

However, despite this conflict having started first, this reminds me of Georgia and Ossetia with a similar solution to the one I proposed then. First we need a little basic recap and geography lesson.

Palestine currently forms two major parts of the area - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip these are currently geographically separated by Israel with the West Bank forming the larger of the two areas. We have two 'governments' the PNA who are elected and the PLO who are appointed from the PNA. In 2006 Hamas were majority elected to the PNA, due to the fact they refused to recognise the right of Israel to exist countries cut off aid payments.

In 2007 to resolve tensions the PLO and PNA agreed the PNA would form a unity government that would feature not only members of Hamas but their rivals Fatah. This lasted only a few months when Hamas fought Fatah and took over the Gaza Strip.

The PLO dissolved the unity government and created a new one. The result is essentially two rival governments the Hamas (democratically elected) that controls Gaza and the Fatah (non-democratic and possibly illegal under current law) that controls the West Bank. Countries being countries most recognise the Fatah (West Bank) as being the legitimate authority.

Now all this has got complicated by Hamas (Gaza) lobbing over rockets into Israel and Israel retaliating. This shouldn't be complicated - it should be treated as a civil war between Gaza and the West Bank. Despite the provocation Israel should not have got involved and should have complained to the recognised Fatah government that one of its territories was attacking them and demand they do something about it before complaining to the UN.

The Fatah government then could appeal to the UN (they currently have observer status) for aid in putting down this insurrection and UN troops move in from Israel (UN member) and Turkey (UN member) to remove the Hamas government and instate the Fatah government.

This is what the UN was created for in the first place.

Ah well the trouble is this has all got mixed in with the overall peace process etc. and thus got ten times more complicated as everyone tries to solve the whole shebang with one sweeping resolution. Ain't going to happen.