Monotony
From the soft brown fields surrounding Moshav Moledet, Operation Cast Lead seems far away. A nearby Bedouin village sits quietly in the mild winter haze; a hot air balloon drifts past, submerged behind the trees like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The silence is broken only by three boys racing past on their Quad bikes. This is the far-east of Israel, less than fifteen miles from the Jordanian border, the encapsulation of all that Zionist talk about quiet.
I am staying with an elderly relative. She came to Moledet in 1936 from Germany, and has stayed ever since. Every year, she sends out a round-robin letter to friends and relatives around the world. This is what she is writing about the current situation: “Since I kept some of my formal letters I am able to compare them with the distressing conclusion that in real substantial matters nothing has changed for the better. I mainly refer to our political situation that remains critical and without satisfying both people in our conflict…In any case, we are always in a great dilemma concerning our reaction to the continued firing of the Qassam rockets to our settlements and towns in the south. In spite of our retreat from the Gaza Strip and the late agrement for a mutual ceasefire, the bombardment goes on. As usual, our military response is colossal, with catastrophic results for the attackers, including innocent civilians…But what can be done? Both possibilities are bad and futile. To restrain from reaction as we did for a long time, and leave our population in an unbearable state of danger from casualties and death. Or to move over to a more aggressive action in Gaza, as we did before, like in Lebanon, where we got stuck in the mud of two useless wars.”