Things that cannot be changed

Things that cannot be changed
7th Feb. 2009
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/02/07/letter-things-cannot-be-changed.html

Referring to Muhammad Rusdi's letter on Gaza (Jan. 29) regarding Israel's non-conformance to UN Resolutions, one should start from the General Assembly's Resolution in 1949 granting statehood, rightly or wrongly, to Israel.
Today, Israel has over 160 overseas diplomatic missions including in Arab countries. So Hamas should recognize it, accept its right to exist and stop the armed struggle. If Hamas does not learn to accept things that cannot be changed and does not learn to coexist, will they also not be responsible for human tragedies on both sides?
In this war, Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel even after Israel accepted the UN's cease-fire, something an Egyptian journalist described on CNN as Hamas's message that they were far from cowed.
It is true Israel has disregarded UN Resolutions. But after the peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, the West Bank and Gaza were not only handed over to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) but the Jewish kibbutzim in those areas were forcibly vacated by evicting the settlers from those areas.
It is quite apparent that support or opposition to this particular war is entirely religion-based and not based on the root cause.
When I see the pictures of devastation and civilian casualties on TV, I am more and more convinced that this and other such wars must never start!
So the UN, in the role of a referee, should spend time, money and effort in positioning a geosynchronous satellite over this area to declare who is the provocateur.
With satellite photography and advanced imagery techniques, it is not difficult to pinpoint who initiated the conflict in a given case and stop the war right there.
Gaza's 40-kilometer Northwestern side is open to the Mediterranean Sea and its 12 km Southwestern side is connected to Egypt's Sinai province (Rafah pass). So why does the world not route all their supplies to Gaza either by ship or barge, or by road through Egypt, a fellow Arab country?
Why should Hamas insist that Israel, its sworn enemy, open their borders to allow human and material traffic? Let us not forget that during the recent conflict, Egypt did not allow Gazans to enter Sinai. And, as regards timing, everyone remembers how Iran released the American hostages while Reagan was taking the oath of the office in 1981!
K B Kale, Jakarta