Murphy’s Law. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. That pretty much sums it up so far in the current dispute between Hamas and Israel. But, of course, there’s a difference. Murphy might be saved because he had the luck of the Irish. Neither the Israeli Jews nor the Palestinian Arabs have anything like that working for them.

What am I thinking about? The bombing of the hospital in Gaza which apparently killed somewhere between 200 and 500 patients and personnel. The Arab world, and the world-wide supporters of the enemies of Israel, have concluded that (1) Israel bombed the hospital, (2) Israel purposely bombed the hospital, and (3) the more killed in the hospital, the happier Israelis must be. Israel says (1) we don’t bomb hospitals, (2) we didn’t bomb this hospital, and (3) Islamic Jihad destroyed the hospital when one of their rockets launched to strike in Israel failed and landed on the hospital instead. Israel said it can prove it in at least two ways: (1) it can track every one of its bombs, (2) it has photos that show that Islamic Jihad fired a few rockets at the time of the hospital blast and the photos show that one of these rockets failed and dropped almost immediately, and (3) it has an Arabic language recording of two Palestinians in Gaza talking about the Islamic Jihad misfire.

The Israelis have apparently turned this material over to U.S. security personnel for analysis, and we will see what comes of this. My guess is that they will agree with the Israelis. But, as we have learned domestically as well as more broadly, facts don’t matter, especially when there are alternative facts that have been developed. Even if it becomes clear to independent observers that the hospital tragedy was the result of an Islamic Jihad misfire, the Arab world will continue to blame Israel – either because they will stick with their alternative facts, or because the facts don’t matter and what does matter is the primal cause of all of their problems, the existence of the State of Israel. So it goes.

And as we already know, it isn’t just the Arabs on the street that have jumped to this conclusion, it’s also the Arab leaders. Starting with PA chief Abbas, who has blamed the Israelis for the strike publicly and without qualification and who has cancelled his planned meeting with President Biden, scheduled for this afternoon. And after Abbas made this announcement, Egyptian President El-Sisi, and Jordanian King Abdullah followed suit, canceling the mini-summit that was to be held in Amman.

I don’t know that I can blame them for the cancellation, and in fact I think it’s a good thing. In the current circumstances, there is no reason why President Biden should travel to an Arab capital. In fact, in my opinion, he shouldn’t be traveling to Tel Aviv either. Remember my friend Murphy.

It was Sartre who wrote the play “No Exit”. I think I may have seen in somewhere in another universe, but I couldn’t begin to tell you what it’s about. But the title would make a great title for the national anthem of Gaza.

With all of the tragedy that has unfolded and continues to unfold, one of the saddest interviews I heard was this evening, when Anderson Cooper interviewed a young architecture student in Gaza. I guess I actually didn’t “hear” the interview – I read the subtitles (I was listening to something else at the same time), and they were very touching. This young woman was in her last year of architecture studies and just thinking about and beginning to create her “senior project” when the war began. She seemed like such a nice young woman, and she said that now, her plans had to change, her studies seemed to be over. It wasn’t that her classes were going to be put on hold for a while, she said that “the entire university has been destroyed”. And, she went on to say (and I wasn’t concentrating on every word) something about now staying in a house that was sheltering 57 people. And that there was no place where you can feel safe. And when you go to bed at night, you know that – at some point during the night – the ceiling might fall right down on you, and you will be killed. She, by the way, said nothing political, nothing vicious, showed no directed anger; she said, she just wanted to be able to live her life, having the same rights as everyone else.

All this is obviously true. And somehow, it can’t be right.

It does look like Israel’s plans might have been changed a bit; certainly they have slowed down. There might not be the extensive ground attack that had been promised, but rather something smaller and more targeted. And this must be because of the extensive damage done through the Israeli air strikes. From the pictures I have seen, much (most?) of Gaza, even if the war ended today, would not be habitable.

So what are the residents of Gaza going to do after this war ends? How will the rubble be cleared and their cities be rebuilt? How will their utilities (power, electricity, water) be turned back on? Who will pay for all of this, and how will they live in the meantime? In other situations, you would think that a large number of these residents would migrate elsewhere. This is what happened, for example, in nearby Syria (admittedly a bigger country), 6,700,000 people emigrated from Syria, as of the end of 2022. (My source is of course Wikipedia: “Refugees of the Syrian Civil War”). They went to neighboring countries, and they went to Europe.

But it does not look like the Gazans will have that choice. Where can they go? Who will take them in? King Abdullah of Jordan today said (or so I heard) that there will be no refugees from Gaza let into either Jordan or Egypt; he called it a “red line”. Yes, the Gazans have “No Exit”. Once again, the Palestinians will be ignored by their fellow Arabs. Mark my words.

Now in a perfect world (not the perfect world so named by Dr. Pangloss), everyone would pitch in once the war was over (or even during it) and – even assuming Hamas is out of the way – work for a perfect Gaza. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and there won’t be a perfect Gaza, and there will remain a Gaza with 2 million people (and more as time goes by) trapped there. They will have no exit, and they will continue to be a powder keg ready to explode and, as is often the case in wars to end all wars, the result will be a slow march to the status quo ante. And that only if we are lucky.

One more thing before I forget. Who was Murphy? It turns out that Edward Murphy was an American aeronautical engineer, and that the first reference to Murphy’s law came at a press conference in 1948 where they were trying to explain what happened…….in a failed rocket test.

So it goes.