Fish In A Barrel

It's 139 square miles in a sunny desert climate.  Its western border is a beautiful blue-green sea.  There is a university, an amusement park, a couple hotels and many beaches.  Sounds nice, right?

It's the Gaza Strip, on the Mediterranean in southwest Israel.  At the moment, it's anything but nice.

Since 1948, Gaza has functioned as a virtual refugee camp for displaced Palestinians.  Israel controls its borders, airspace and waters, and tries to control the 1.7 million people cooped up in Gaza.

But the pigeons have never really enjoyed the coop.  Understandably, they feel ripped-off and fenced in.  From time to time, they lash out at their perceived captors and shoot unguided mortars and rockets into the less-populated areas of Israel which surround Gaza.  Occasionally, these glorified Roman candles do damage to property and maim and kill people. 

Understandably, the Israelis don't have a sense of humor about this.  They get angry and retaliate.  Their retaliation is not with hit-or-miss short-range light stuff.  No, the Israelis fire back with high-tech, precision-guided heavy ordnance.  And guidance is pretty much unnecessary.  The Palestinians are so packed in, if you lob something into the Strip, you'll almost surely hit something or somebody everytime.  It's fish in a barrel.  Too easy.

In the current flare-up, the score so far is:  1000 Palestinian random rocket launches, 5 Israeli casualties; 1500 Israeli targeted missile strikes, 135 Palestinian dead.  

Hilary's in Tel Aviv now, the latest would-be American peacemaker.  Hard-ass Bibi's being typically bellicose. Unless all this craziness finally results in the Grail of the two-state solution, this latest violence will be of no consequence and nothing will change.  Perpetually depressing futility.

"Every night we fuss and fight like Arabs and like Jews.
"I guess love is just monkey-see, monkey-do."
-- Michael Franks