// War Literature

I must say, before elaborating on the topic of “paralyzed peace” we discussed in class, that Palestine was indeed different from any other material I’ve read on Middle East conflict, especially from mass media sources. Somehow, all big words such as religion, war, politics, ethnicity and even hate, while constantly present, were in the back of my mind, and I quite often caught myself focused on the simplicity of human nature. And by saying “simplicity”, by no means I intend to degrade our superiority over other leaving species, but rather emphasize our ability to adapt to a given situation in order to survive, situation where even death sometimes is not an option.

But enough of philosophy, here’s a quote from the book, “The soldiers rotate every 15 days. At first they have stereotypes about prisoners. They act tough… After seven days they see things differently… the moment they start to relax and act as humans… we get another bunch of bastards.” Now, obviously there is a reason for this, and it is to maintain the delicately structured circle between prisoners and the guards. But I must ask myself, what would happen if guards weren’t rotated every fifteen days, but rather every thirty days, so to say. First answer that comes to me is they would see the prisoners as humans. Indeed, I’m not qualified to tackle the Middle East issue and seek answers, and nonetheless, just by visualizing the “15 day” circle being utilized within larger and much similar structures, I can’t help but realize that there is no intention to un-paralyze the “peace” and this conflict is very carefully constructed to stay here for a very long time.