The most often quot­ed def­i­n­i­tion of insan­i­ty is “doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results.”

So what’s the def­i­n­i­tion of “doing VARIATIONS of the same thing over and over…etc…” ?

 Answer: “Israel ver­sus Hamas”.

The Israelis have bound­less exam­ples of how any action against Pales­tini­ans, such as the efforts to evict fam­i­lies from an East Jerusalem neigh­bour­hood, is a wel­come red flag to Hamas militants.

When Hamas launched its lat­est rock­et bar­rages, its lead­er­ship already had ample evi­dence of how the Israeli mil­i­tary would respond.

Gaza was pound­ed for fifty days for a less­er assault in 2014.

In 1982 Israel invad­ed Lebanon, took over the east­ern half of the cap­i­tal Beirut and bom­bard­ed the west­ern side for near­ly three months to curb ter­ror­ist attacks by the armed wing of the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Organization.

The recent eleven-day pul­ver­iz­ing of Gaza to dimin­ish Hamas is a vari­a­tion on that theme. Like the inva­sion, it fell far short of con­vinc­ing the Pales­tini­ans to accept what­ev­er Israel choos­es to give, or not give them.

Haz­im Qasem, a Hamas spokesman, summed it up this way: “Our peo­ple and their valiant resis­tance will con­tin­ue to defend our rights and sanc­ti­ties  (sic) until the occu­pi­er is expelled from our entire land.”

How breach­ing a cease­fire by set­ting fire to Israeli fields with incen­di­ary bal­loons, only days after hav­ing suf­fered an esti­mat­ed 89-mil­lion dol­lars worth of dam­age to Gaza’s civil­ian and agri­cul­tur­al areas and ener­gy sec­tor is sup­posed to help bring that about is a mystery.

Even the most fanat­i­cal mil­i­tant knows that Hamas can­not hope to dent, nev­er mind beat the Israeli Defense Force, whose gen­er­als in turn know the res­o­lu­tion of the war they have been fight­ing for sev­en­ty-three years is not, in the end, military.

What nei­ther side seems to ful­ly grasp is that they are cut from the same cloth.

In the course of many trips over sev­er­al decades to Israel, I nev­er met an Israeli Jew who would not will­ing­ly endure and sac­ri­fice what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to defend the nation’s sov­er­eign­ty and right to exist.

I also spent a lot of time report­ing the oth­er side, who are equal­ly will­ing to die for the cause of a homeland.

In 1982, stand­ing at street lev­el next to the roof of a mul­ti-sto­ried West Beirut apart­ment block that had been pan­caked by a spe­cial Israeli bomb, I asked a Pales­tin­ian gun­man how he thought he could beat that kind of fire­pow­er with the AK-47 slung on his shoulder.

“For as long as any­one can remem­ber before 1948 (when Israel was found­ed) my fam­i­ly lived in Haifa,” he said. “I can­not go back there, but Men­achem Begin, who was born in Poland, can be prime min­is­ter of what they call Israel. What choice do I have but to fight?”

                        THE HEART OF THE MATTER

 As in the case of so many con­flicts, reli­gion is the most intractable part of the problem.

Every­body claims Jerusalem.

Viewed from atop the ancient city walls, the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane, Gol­go­tha and the Holy Sep­ul­cher (Chris­t­ian), King David’s tomb and the Wail­ing Wall (Jew­ish) and the Dome of the Rock (Moslem) are so close to each oth­er that from a cen­tral point, a Pales­tin­ian teenag­er could almost hit them all with a slingshot.

The three monothe­is­tic reli­gions trace their ori­gins to Abra­ham and wor­ship the same God. That they can’t agree to share a place sacred to all of them says a lot, none of it complimentary.

                                  MY DEAL OR NO DEAL

One hot Sat­ur­day after­noon in the almost desert­ed Arab sec­tion of the Old City, I came across two tourists bar­gain­ing with a young Pales­tin­ian mer­chant. They were the only cus­tomers in sight, and the sou­venir shop was one of only a hand­ful that had both­ered to stay open. Under the cir­cum­stances, a sale would be good for both sides. The cou­ple hag­gled with an “our price or no deal” atti­tude, even when it became obvi­ous­ly unacceptable.

When they turned away, the Pales­tin­ian smiled and said: “Have a nice day, akho shar­mootah.”

The man said “Thank you”, obliv­i­ous to the fact that he’d just been addressed as “Broth­er of a Whore.”

I wagged a fin­ger to let the sales­man know I under­stood. He grinned and shrugged his shoul­ders, as if to say, “what else can I do?”.

It was an inad­ver­tent but neat encap­su­la­tion of the greater prob­lem: two sides non-nego­ti­at­ing a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial deal, and find­ing no com­mon ground except bare­ly hid­den contempt.

Sure­ly what are arguably history’s two most stub­born sur­vivors can do bet­ter than try­ing to fit a par­tic­u­lar­ly dead­ly and destruc­tive def­i­n­i­tion of insanity.

But then again…maybe not.

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