Consider how much Israel had to celebrate on its 70th anniversary this week. The achievements are impressive almost everywhere you look – in agriculture, science and innovation, medicine and technology, and in the living standards Israel offers its citizens. Above all, Israel has created a vibrant liberal democracy in a region where autocracy and theocracy are the norm.
Add a fresh triumph at Eurovision and joy should have been uncontained. Instead, Independence Day 2018 turned out to be a vivid reminder of the bleeding wound that is the unresolved conflict between Israelis and the Palestinian people, who share territorial claims over this strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.
In Gaza, where close to 2 million Palestinians live cheek by jowl in what is effectively a vast open prison, a protest that had been simmering for months boiled over into bloody violence. Israeli soldiers killed more than 50 unarmed protesters. Another 2000 were injured.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has many unique elements, including that the claims and counter-claims over land rights stretch back to biblical times. But the roots of the suffering of the people in Gaza are depressingly familiar: overcrowding, inadequate services and a lack of jobs (almost half are unemployed).
Read the editorial in The Age.