Rockets, Articles, and Thoughts

As you may or may not know, the Palestinians and the Israeli's have reached a cease fire agreement to their 4 day long rocket battle.  Here are different articles I've compiled about the same clash.  This has been a fairly straightforward clash--rockets fired, a couple of Palestinian civilians killed, couple of Israeli civilians injured, Palestinians threw a couple of mortars after the cease fire--so it's been interesting to see which sources reported which facts. In my opinion the gold medal for reporting goes to BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17348403

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/world/middleeast/in-gaza-new-conditions-shape-old-fight.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&fb_source=message

http://jordantimes.com/israel-gaza-violence-rages-into-fourth-day

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/some-200-rockets-hit-israel-since-start-of-latest-gaza-escalation-1.418173

http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article.aspx?id=261674

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=261676

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/03/201231215055832181.html

Some Thoughts:

Hamas and Israel don't talk directly to each other. I think one of the greatest things about politics is how people need to sit down across a table from somebody else who they would rather not ever talk to and who they don't agree with on any one thing, and those two sides will need to come to a civil agreement (or disagreement) and shake hands afterwards with a fake smile (but smile nonetheless) for the cameras.  How is anything productive supposed to get done when the two sides start by saying "I won't even look at him, let alone hear the words he has to say directly from his own mouth". I guess at least there's a cease fire and people aren't dying any more. Band-aid in place. How many more band-aids will this region be able to handle? This would be a fascinating arena to analyze the job of the translators!

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by Desmond Tutu: "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."  Do these two sides even see each other as human anymore?  Well a whole generation of Gazans haven't been allowed into Israel, and therefore have never seen an Israeli in the flesh. I'm not sure if any Israeli's go into Gaza, I'm sure most haven't.  When I was little I used to think that the Rugrats were real people, and people in whatever country they were from actually looked like that and babies actually talked and organized crazy adventures.  Crazy, I know, but I was a kid, and I did think that. How are the Palestinian and Israeli kids viewing each other when all they have for context is rockets flying back and forth over their separation wall and this conflict that is injuring/killing their friends and family.

Maybe a kids soccer league needs to be organized--Palestinian teams versus Israeli teams.  Baby steps, eventually...hopefully, they'll be able to play on the same team together.  Would their parents let them play? Would the kids want to play?