Gaza's Fight to Exist

In the rubbles of Gaza, there now lie more than 300 Palestinians. Victims to both the cruel coincidence of their geographic birth land and a conflict spanning almost a century. It is a strange place where making it through an entire day is considered a privilege, let alone accessing food and shelter. And yet, Hamas, a militant organisation, continues to pummel Israel with rockets from within the confines of the Gaza strip -- rockets which hardly have the ability to cross the border into Israel. But history will bear witness to the mutual political onanism and the uncompromising nature of prejudice that has accompanied this conflict. The dead, like those who died before them, will be reduced to a tiny footnote.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist group in many countries around the world. Their disgusting tactic of building operational cells near hospitals and schools and their method of using religious sentiment to drive their propaganda is pathetic. The existence of Hamas is detrimental to any chance of peace that Palestinians have at the moment and the final recipient of any monetary aid towards Palestine must be verified by donors, lest it be used to fill the coffers of Hamas.
And yet, Hamas only makes for a quarter of the story. The fact of the matter remains that the State of Israel came into existence in 1948 on a land that was till then known as Palestine. The Jewish people that took up residence there were fleeing from all over the world, having been the target of widespread hate and persecution for most of the millennium. Israel, then, armed with financial clout and backing from influential states, curtailed and oppressed the Palestinians in a cruel display of irony. That a militant organisation such as Hamas should bloom into existence in an area where Palestinians were being sidelined from their own land is not rocket science. Resistance to Israel's Zionist dream of a Jewish state was destined to incite sharp resistance. But even if Israel successfully manages to wipe out the threat from Hamas, a hundred other groups will take shape. Such is the characteristic of oppression -- it will continually create its own opposition.
Demarcation lines have to be drawn and we have to come to terms with facts -- this is not a religious war. It is an economic one centring on money and real estate, like all the other wars that have ever been fought, including the Crusades. The most recent instance of conflict comes after Hamas, after seven years of power in Gaza, handed over the reins to the united government of Palestine. The dispute arose as Hamas lost its Egyptian ally Morsi and Egypt subsequently tightened its borders and the flow of cash and 43,000 Hamas civil servants went unpaid. Any attempts to aid the unpaid employees were halted by the USA and Israel, who demanded that Hamas waive military control as well, and Hamas resorted to firing rockets once more. It could be argued that the recent spate of conflict has been brought about by Israel and the West.
At the moment, the Gaza strip is slowly dying. The Palestinians are now stuck on that piece of land with stringent border measures on both sides and next to no foreign aid while Israel enjoys being the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It seems fair to say that peaceful coexistence is not a concept we have fully grasped as of yet. It is also equally important for us to realise some facts -- firstly, Israel is not synonymous to all the Jewish people in the world and anti-Semitism is a dreadful practice and secondly, although Hamas propaganda has made it seem like a war against Islam in order to boost its funding, that is not the case. Your religion does not have to be the reason for your show of solidarity. Stand in solidarity with a people that have had their land and economic freedom yanked unceremoniously away from them -- that is reason enough.