Gaza Human Tragedy

Not long ago, Vanity Fair magazine said two White House blunders allowed fanatics to grab control of the Gaza Strip south of Israel:

First, the Bush administration ignored Muslim extremist fever and prodded the Palestinian authority to rush into a hasty 2006 election - then was horrified when militant zealots of the Hamas faction won 56 percent of parliament seats.

Second, the White House secretly backed armed Fatah units to overthrow Hamas - but it backfired, and Hamas seized complete control of Gaza.

Ever since, Hamas zealots in Gaza have been firing a few crude rockets into Israel, mostly hitting nothing, and Israel retaliates with deadly airstrikes. Israel has shut off funds and clamped a blockade around Gaza, using gunboats to thwart relief ships from the Mediterranean. As a result, Gaza is sunk in deep poverty and desperation. Airstrikes destroyed industries, power plants, water supplies and other essentials.

"Gaza is heading down the tubes," a U.N. relief official commented. "We are now down to a subsistence existence. ... 1.4 million people have no job, no money, no prospects and an acute sense of imprisonment."

The U.N. World Food Program supplies enough nutrition to keep Gazans alive, but they live a nightmare. Ordinary families and children pay a painful price, although they are only faintly linked to the religio-ethnic-political struggle between Jews and Muslims.

Last week, peace activists from 17 nations took a risk to "break the siege of Gaza." They sailed two wooden boats from Cyprus to Gaza, bringing medical supplies and balloons for children. They assumed that Israeli warships wouldn't fire on them, but they worried that Israel might seize their boats and imprison them. Instead, Israel's parliament decided to let them land as "a one-time measure."

In the past, Israeli gunboats have killed unarmed Gaza fishermen in Gaza's territorial water in the Mediterranean. Monday, some of the international peace demonstrators joined anglers in another attempt to regain the right to fish - but an urgent e-mail from the peace group said Israeli shots were fired. Perhaps they were intended as warnings, because none of the unarmed Palestinians or guests was hit.

Why can't the finest minds of the United Nations work out a solution for the barbaric hostilities of the Middle East? Why must hate and killing continue for generations?

It's a shame that children grow up in destitution because adults cannot learn to coexist like adults.