It can seem hard at times to find some kind of fitting way ahead.  Hard, specifically, to find ways to respond with a degree of humanity in any way adequate for the scale of what is being played out, once again, in Gaza as I write.  It’s not enough to say we should have seen it coming, that the signs were there of the faltering process, that Netanyahu may have been in any case looking for excuses to return to the levels of bombardment we are witnessing again.

It speaks to particular pains.  It can seem hard to fully empathise with the Israeli situation for example when the retribution is so disproportionate, when the tally of lives lost or destroyed renders them now the aggressor, the perpetrators of seemingly perpetual war.  It’s hard in other words, when our newsfeeds are full of dead or starving Palestinian children, to consider Israel’s experience, how any other nominally Western nation might respond (and forgive the lack of equivalence; I mention it as a statement of what’s very much part of the problem) if hundreds of their population were butchered or kidnapped, not least when Hamas still do not recognise the Israeli state, are as far away from advocating or accepting a two-state solution as anyone in Netanyahu’s cabinet.  It’s hard to imagine, even as – or especially as – we see the given state in Gaza, how it may be to live in fear of rocket raids, of the psychological strain of being surrounded by enemies real or perceived, of how it must be to feel your country is under a state of perpetual siege.

You can point fingers quite squarely at Hamas then, even if we can wonder how any of us would react in the face of seeing countless friends and family lost, how it’s not hard to see how Israel’s bombardments might act as a perfect recruitment device.  But Hamas are historically simply survivors, the last players standing in a power struggle with Fatah that had gone on since at least the Palestinian elections of 2006, that they seemed to offer something credible in the face of the latter’s clear failures and corruption, that it was in no small part that many felt driven to Hama’s arms given Fatah’s acquiescence to demands from an unreasonable Israeli state.

And, if we can be mindful of the Israeli mentality, its stresses and long forbearance, how much easier is it to see the Palestinian side?  How much less can we wonder at their response after so many decades in an effective open prison where few could leave and daily conditions were harsh if not downright humiliating and the international community largely looked away?  Is it any wonder Hamas gained such standing and credulity in such a scenario, even as the ‘solutions’ they proposed played into the hands of the Israeli right?  Hamas and Netanyahu need each other in a sense, locked as they appear to be in a mutually antagonistic spiral.

In the meantime, what can we do as world citizens when marching and letters, even vigils, do not seem enough?  Where can we go with the knowledge that, far away, over vast distances of land and sea, scenes are being played out as bad as anything the last century threw at our feet, all the worse perhaps as we like to see ourselves as more enlightened these days, the spirit of the times supposedly lit up by greater grace and goodwill, where we foster conditions for healing, where we are meant to have moved on en masse as part of a greater humanity, a greater synthesis, as if Spring itself is meant to usher in a better age?  The ongoing onslaught in Gaza pulls such aspirations into greater light; if these sentiments hold any currency at all, surely they should be brought to bear with every effort we can muster to help end the suffering in Gaza, to help bring the hostages home.  The question remains; how can we respond at all to such horror with any degree of application fitting for its scale, with anything that holds any hope at all of cessation, let alone justice itself?

As charter after charter of international condemnation is invoked, as declarations of human rights abuses, constitutions of genocide, of war crimes come and go like bitter milestones on a bitter road, it’s easy to feel words are cheap.  Would America be less intransigent if not more positively proactive without a Zionistic hinterland that seems to believe this all a precursor to some kind of greater messianic immanence?  Could we stand a little taller in the UK if we cut off all arms sales to Israel, over and above some positive moves in this respect more recently?  Can the banks disinvest?  Can boycotts carry more teeth?  Or should we be looking a little harder at the roots of this conflict, the grievances held by both sides, advocate space for renewed diplomacy, do not surrender to policy negotiated from the barrel of a gun?

If it’s clear that Israel is currently in the grip of a recalcitrant right wing and that many in the global Jewish diaspora, even many Israelis, regard their policies as the worst kind of intransigence; if we can hold some expectation that Trump could find it in himself to be more genuinely helpful, that in itself carries the hope that, in better circumstances, there might actually be more traction for some kind of better way ahead.

If it is in any way enough to seek to get our houses in better order, to bear bitter witness, to strive for Gaza with every part of us in the knowledge that every life counts, perhaps we can try a little harder too to fathom why so many Israelis support such a scale of aggression and the nature of the micro-climate of that country’s press.  Perhaps we can seek to understand a little better how wrongdoing can be facilitated not just by the banality of any absence of response, but can be driven by historic and more current wounds being wilfully exploited.  If nothing else, it may carry lessons for the future.  It might just shine a better light on our collective here and now.