Sorting Out A Conflict Is Never Easy

It's always difficult to assign the blame for "starting it" when you're looking at a long-running struggle. If you pick a side in any conflict, you can always latch onto the latest atrocity of the opponent and begin to carry a banner.

I have my favorite in the Gaza struggle, for example, but I don't really know anything. Why do I have an opinion? Because of the media coverage that has come my way. There's no foreign press in Gaza at the moment, so everything I'm seeing is controlled.

If we go back to the June ceasefire, we can assume that all the parties are starting with something of a clean slate. Hamas still had an Israeli prisoner of war that Israel was hoping to have returned, but we have to start somewhere.

It wasn't long after the June ceasefire was signed that Hamas began lobbing missiles into Israel. Two in the first week. Despite calls for retaliation, the Israelis were hoping to get back their captured soldier and instead went to Egypt for further talks with Hamas. (New York Sun)

The June ceasefire got a serious jolt in November when Israel destroyed a tunnel between Gaza and Israel. There were plenty of sparks after that. Hamas had continued to fire rockets into Israel now and then, but the rocket attacks blossomed with three dozen launchings after the tunnel incident. Hamas claimed the tunnel incident was an attempted incursion by the Israelis, while the Israelis saw it as an effort to stop Hamas militants from coming into Israel to kidnap more soldiers. (MSNBC)

This is the Israeli explanation for the tunnel attack back in November:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that while Israel wanted to continue the truce, it could not tolerate tunnel digging.

"When Israel agreed to the truce it didn't agree that while there was calm, Hamas would exploit it to dig tunnels, whether they are for smuggling weapons, for perpetrating attacks or kidnapping soldiers," she said. "Therefore, if it becomes clear that is what's happening, it is the government's responsibility to act."

"The [Tuesday night] operation was necessary in order to preserve Israel security," she continued. "Israel cannot tolerate such blatant violations of the truce." (Jerusalem Post)

Wikipedia says the truce ended a little over a week ago and that the ceasefire was only one part of a longer ongoing struggle. Who's to say the truce didn't end back in June, the week after it began, with the resumption of Hamas rocket fire? Or maybe it ended in November when Israel attacked the tunnel?

You can always find information online, but the truth is rarely in the details. So, the blame game can become complicated pretty quickly. Probably best not to play. David Quigg, a blogger at Huffington Post, wrote a piece that suggests that we not be so quick to cast blame. He's got the right idea.

.... So few of us would be able to face the ghosts of the dead and justify why we cheered on Israel or why we made excuses for Hamas. We should shut up.