Both, Camp and I, entered our watering hole at the same time, ducking out of the rain. As soon as we sat down, I wanted to know what Camp thought about the latest war in the middle-east.     

‘Is there a solution in Palestine? After the massive terrorist attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas, killing over 1400 Israelis, including foreign nationals, it seems that this war will go on indefinitely,’ I said to Camp who was slowly shaking his head.

‘I’ll give you some historical context. When British colonial rule ended in Palestine, in the late 1940s, violence intensified between Jews and Arabs, culminating in war between the newly created State of Israel and its Arab neighbors in May 1948. Tens of thousands of Palestinians took refuge in Gaza after fleeing or being driven from their homes. Then in the 1967 six-day war Israel captured the Gaza Strip. An Israeli census that year put Gaza’s population at 394,000, at least 60% of them refugees.’

‘So, when did Hamas form?’

            ‘In 1987, just after the first Intifada against Israel. Hamas was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric. Remember the old guy in a wheelchair that looked like Gandalf on drugs and could barely talk.  He and his two bodyguards were killed in 2004 by a Hellfire missile fired by an Israeli Apache helicopter, during morning prayer in Gaza City.’ 

            ‘That radicalized Hamas which now was solely dedicated to Israel’s destruction and restoration of Islamic rule in Palestine. Hamas became a rival to Yasser Arafat’s secular Fatah party that led to forming the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organisation.’

            ‘Wasn’t it Arafat that frittered away the chance for some kind of a path forward by not signing an agreement that he, Ehud Barak and Clinton had agreed upon?’ I said.

            ‘Yes, that was in 2000,’ Camp nodded, ‘and Clinton considered himself a failure because he could not get Arafat to sign. Arafat’s financial empire was worth between $3 and 5$ billion in 1996, according to the PLO’s former finance minister, Jaweed al-Ghyssein.’ 

            ‘Just another despotic thief with a luxury wife in Paris, I seem to remember.’

            ‘After that missed opportunity Israeli-Palestinian relations reached a new low and started the second Palestinian intifada. Suicide bombings and shooting attacks by Palestinians that prompted Israeli air strikes, demolitions, no-go zones and curfews. Then in 2005 Israel evacuated all its troop and settlers from Gaza which by then was completely fenced off  from the outside world by Israel. The next year, 2006, Hamas won a surprise victory in Palestinian elections and seized full control of Gaza.’

            ‘And in 2014 Egypt closed the border with Gaza and blew up most of the tunnels. After that, Gaza became the biggest open-air prison in the world.’

            ‘And it seems to me while Israel believed that containing a war-weary Hamas by providing some economic incentives to Gazan workers, Hamas fighters were being trained drilled and equipped. And now this terror attack on Israeli civilians, including killing over a hundred people at a music concert.’

‘What about the explosion at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza City which killed hundreds of people?’ I said.

‘It isn’t clear at this time who is actually responsible for this shameful attack.  The blame game is in full throttle. The Israeli military and the US blame the blast on a failed missile launch by the Islamic Jihad group while the Arab world blames Israel. It begs the old Cicero question: Cui bono? Who benefits from this attack politically and militarily.?’ In this instance it is the Palestinians who get the sympathy vote; last week it was the Israelis.

We both looked out at the grey water and listened as the rain hammered the glass roof above us. We looked around for our server who was chatting with some guy at the bar. We can’t complain about our empty beers or about anything really. Once again, we are just glad to live where we do. Rain or shine.