I fear the violence will get worse, much worse

Mostly I am feeling too depressed about what’s happening in Gaza to even find words to comment on it. Civil war has been looming for so long, and yet I kept hoping against hope that it wouldn’t actually break; that somehow, something would change to divert things from their inexorable path.
 
For once, on this bleakest of days, I find it hard not to want to blame the Palestinians themselves. The roots of their desperation and grievance may lie in the economic, political and social prison they have been forced into by a combination of Israeli policy and international compliance, but truly, how can this most sickening of internecine wars do anything but damage the legitimacy of their cause?
 
I don’t understand. I have met people in Hamas, people in Fatah, and I know they want peace – with each other, and with Israel. My Palestinian friends and acquaintances are some of the most intelligent, reasonable and hopeful people I know. How is this happening? And what can we do about it? What can anyone do about it?
 
I went to a deputy leadership debate earlier this afternoon in which the situation in Palestine was discussed and candidates were asked outright if they thought it was time to recognise the National Unity Government. Whilst they were all careful not to veer too far off the official party line, it became very clear that they all found some degree of inconsistency and hypocrisy in the fact that we are asking Hamas to recognise Israel when Israel won’t return the favour (and nor will we). People will be quick to lay all the blame at Hamas’ feet – they’re an easier target than our ‘allies’ Fatah, after all. But they were, let us not forget, democratically elected in January 2006 – while the US and UK’s rallying cries for democracy in the Middle East were still ringing in the world’s ears.
 
Maybe, just maybe, if we had not exercised a total embargo on Hamas which, the aid of the TIM notwithstanding, has further crippled the livelihood of the Palestinian people; maybe if we had given support to the National Unity Government when they genuinely took steps to try and find a workable way of governing the Palestinian Authority together; maybe if we had shown the courage to extend our ‘dialogue’ – which, as Harriet Harman pointed out, we have nurtured with Israel even as Israel have continued to build a part-illegal wall and wholly illegal settlements – to the Palestinians; maybe this final devastating development could have been stopped. But we didn’t, and it hasn’t.
 
And, as civil war will no doubt spread beyond the prison walls of Gaza, unleashing, I fear, the worst violence we have ever seen in the region, we may all come to feel the consequences of that. The problems in the Middle East are all interlinked, and although not everything in the region would have been cured by an Israel-Palestine peace – nothing, nothing will be cured without it.