Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
A bunch of you might not like it, but every heartwarming story about an Israeli and a Palestinian finding love and friendship is because they did exactly this. They clearly need more of it.
Palestine is an Anglicisation. In Arabic it’s pronounced Philistine. They have been at each other’s throats like this since the Bronze Age. They’ve had millennia to put the past behind them. This is an ancient, stupid quarrel. Through a continuous vengeance cycle, they made it get this bad. I’m fully aware that European colonialism and American interference (same bloody thing really) only made it worse. I’m sure volumes are written about all I don’t understand here.
I wasn’t suggesting that a simple policy change of “love your enemy” would fix this complex shitstorm. If I thought I had a solution, I’d write something much longer and still be rightly called stupid, because I’m nobody. I was expressing exasperation with this whole damned situation. I’ve got nothing else.