13 June, 2007

Gaza

I wrote something today for BBC World Have Your Say. Well, I wrote a comment to them regarding the piece they were doing on the recent events in Gaza. It wasn't like I was called and asked to write someting, just sent an email and asked to comment if I felt like it.
I wrote it on another computer, which I could turn on, then copy and paste, but I'm too lazy to even cross the room, so now I sit here telling you what I wrote.
My point was, "What else is there to do in Gaza but fight?" If you are twenty-five and have been fighting for five years, ten perhaps, then what else are you reallly qualified to do? Is it easier to fight than to build for a better Gaza in the future. I have never been there, so I'm just talking and wondering, not pointing the fingers at those living in Gaza. It doesn't appear that there is much infrastucture, industry, education, jobs or opportunity, besides linking up with one side or the other and squeezing your trigger finger.
If you watch the footage, it appears to be total chaos. What I'm saying is that yes there are supposed to be two main factions fighting, but within each faction there appears many splinter groups, conflicts, opportunists and a lot of people just standing around.
I began to wonder if conflict will become a part of the DNA of this culture, or maybe it already has. Afghanistan, Colombia, etc, places that just grind on, year after year, war, famine, war, corruption, etc.
I think these places, in some ways, fail to exist to most people because this drama has been so "normal" for so long it no longer has much of an impact, unless you have a personal connection. I think it proves there is an intanglible aspect of humanity that almost needs war. And war is good business, for the people on the fringes, and it sure seems to be, in some ways, an "easy" way out.
Mabye I'm wrong, but each day I see more and more that makes me wonder.

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