Random Thoughts From A City Under Siege

FIRST, I would like to explain that I am just like you, or anyone else for that matter, and that I am not special in any way for being where I am. While it is not simply an issue of consequence that I am sitting in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian war, it could just as well be any one of you sitting in my place. And from where I am sitting, I constantly hear the sound of Israeli tanks pounding away in residential neighbourhoods with their high-velocity and lethal machineguns.

Hundreds, no, make that thousands of bullets flying. I wonder where they all go. Two ended up in my friend's kitchen. So far today, at least two have ended up in Palestinians who are now dead. I am sure that others are lodged in buildings, crashed through windows, etc., but think of all that damage.

It seems to me that Palestine has become Afghanistan XP (as in expropriated). Like the Taleban in Afghanistan, the rightful and legitimate Palestinian leadership has been stripped of its standing in the international community and has been deemed irrelevant by its opponent. This is not to draw a similarity between the Taleban and the Palestinian National Authority (there really is none), but rather, it seems we are entering a new era of warfare, when one nation can simply determine that the leadership of the other simply does not exist and acts to make this premise reality. And all the while, land, houses and buildings are expropriated by settlers and the occupation forces, or are simply destroyed because they get in the way.