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Would reverse logic be logical in Gaza?

Would reverse logic be logical in Gaza? The natural human action if someone has a grievance is to continue, continue, continue, enough until the grievance is balanced out by action onto the other. When enough has been proved, then at least there is some satisfaction that the grievance did not go unnoticed. And of course in the natural order of things, the balance of life is held not by peace and love man, sharing and caring, empathizing and including, but by that basic and unalterable equation in the life zone on the Earth’s surface where everything is limited, and all participants (except the human) balance between themselves of resources and networks, and that includes eating each other, because where else would they get their food? From the tiniest bacteria to the biggest elephant, all are within a network of survival where the life zone is circulated within the defining parameter of gravity, water, and Sunlight.

Several species of ant take slaves, lions work together to get a gazelle, just as the large sea creatures position themselves together when the shoals come into shore, to ensure maximum food at the optimum time. Such is the connectivity and intelligence within species, and the native tribes would be more a part of the natural world than what is now the different perceived habitation of the human. Even the early empires of the eastern Mediterranean, of the vast Persian empire, the Egyptians, Hellenistic Greece, everything measured still to geo-graphy, but also the psychology of the modern human species to control more than is needed for food. Was it the Third Punic War, where Rome triumphed and the stage was open for expansion, domination, and the watchful eye of Fortune conveniently avoided? In 63 BCE the Roman army sacked Jerusalem, and the various sieges and destruction during the 60s BCE is a long time ago, but the geography is the same.

In 2025, the Middle East (as defined from Britain, but in the Middle East they are just where they are) is a crisis and way beyond the ken of this writer. However, if focus comes back out instead of in deeper, there are just a few cogs in the chaos which show as a cause and effect. The modern human, when there’s a cause, just continues, beyond the need for food and water and sex which is the natural biological drivers but because Israel and Gaza are not a large empire territory, would it be possible to hold two things together? The biological ethnographic difference of peoples who have been natives in the area for thousands of years, and warring tribes are as natural as quarrelsome rooks, combined with the complications of modern politics, the west’s obsession with imposing democracy on every corner of the world (which has no corners, because it is sphere formed by gravity), the supply of weapons, which are called arms, armaments, and the global media conveying all aspects, from all points of view.

If the one event of Hamas taking Jewish hostages in October 2023, and from which has unleashed a kind of nuclear bomb reaction, not surprisingly for the hostages and families involved, if that were seen as the highest peak of upset, regardless of how the whole conflict came to be, but just taking that one incident and drawing a line around it, what would happen if Hamas just released all remaining hostages and said, ‘We’ve made our point.’ Does focus become clearer when combat goes on, as logically it would be thought, or does it become clearer when reverse logic is applied, and the tug of war rope put down? If one side just stops, where does the winner/loser equation lie? What would Israel do, or the leader of Israel do, if all hostages were released, walked to the conflict line and returned to where they belong, what happens next?

There is a phrase of someone who doesn’t take prisoners, and the general meaning is that they then don’t live with the confusion involved, the uncertainty, or the need to keep your prisoners secure but also fed and watered, all of which take resources which you might not have. To not take prisoners which have to be kept, is therefore liberating, and liberation of course is the opposite of being a prisoner. What if the people of Gaza had a poll to vote whether they wanted Hamas to return all prisoners, and to see if that would stop the bombing. To demarcate just that one action, and do it, is that warfare or leadership? Long gone are the days when conflicts were settled by an arm wrestle, and more’s the pity, but also long gone are the days when a leader also had to use some philosophical manoevering, some checks and balance for their own survival even apart from warfare, and as natural and inevitable as conflict is, why could not this very local and yet polar opposite conflict be a zone for a new kind of more cerebral conflict. Total destruction of the other is understandable, especially as the suffering grows by the day, but in such chaos there is even more possibility for testing out a reverse logic. If instead of losing it would be a gain, by showing one has the power of thought and action, then why not?