Gaza and climate change…Imran Jan

I was once driving from Houston to Colorado. If you ever got the chance to make that drive or if you take a look at the map, youd realise that doing that drive means driving through the entire state of Texas including the Texas Panhandle. To put things into perspective, youll drive all day for about 11 hours and youd still be in Texas.

On the way, I saw many places and many different cultures and people. The one thing you cant miss is the vast and endless land in any direction you look. And if you, like me, are in the habit of thinking about politics most of the time, then the one inescapable thought that would hit you is: why cant the United States allow the enormous amount of people who want to migrate here and speaking of which, why cant the US just provide shelter to all of the Israeli citizens right here in Texas? The weather and the feel of the area may not be much different after all. But you and I know it is not that simple.

Landmass is available in a tremendous amount here on this planet. Many places are to this day unexplored. Yet, we still fight over landmass as if it is in limited supply. Many people argue that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is about faith. It may have evolved into that to some extent but the real driver of the conflict is the landmass, which both the people lay claim to.

Nation states are vulnerable entities. Standing armies are needed to keep them protected and ensure their continuity. They do not grow like natural entities. Faith, on the other hand, does not need any army to keep it intact. Armies have fought to impose faith over others or to establish the self-righteous thought that one faith has a bigger God than the other one. Nevertheless, a defeated mans state and sword can be taken away but not his faith. The Palestinians are not interested in converting the Israelis into Muslims and the Israelis are not doing this aggression to force the Palestinians into converting to Judaism. They are fighting over land. This is about real estate.

And that real estate is going to go underwater in a shorter time than the duration of time this conflict has existed. This has been a 100-year war or about 75 if you count it from Nakba. The Mediterranean Sea has been rising steadily and Egypts city of Alexandria, which is not too far from Gaza, is one of the most vulnerable places on the planet to rising sea levels. And according to current estimates, which are always quite modest, in less than 75 years the landmass over which Israel has been killing so many innocent civilians may just not even exist anymore. If Gaza goes underwater, it is not going to be a good day for Israel because that would mean that their fake country would then become the coastal city and then it would be next in line for the ever angry and raging sea.

Before this current war in Gaza, a huge amount of houses in Gaza had solar panels installed on their roofs to be able to not only use clean energy but also avoid being at Israels mercy, which had total control over Gazas electricity. Not only are those clean energy generating solar panels gone in those flattened houses but Israel also uses an enormous amount of fuel in their tanks, which adds further carbon dioxide to an already choked atmosphere. The decaying bodies could result in disease that will most certainly spread to Israel and beyond.

In Game Of Thrones, all the enemies came together to tackle the one common enemy: the white walkers. In our world, all the important players, such as the US, Israel, the UK and so forth, have teamed up too except to allow that common enemy even more space and strength to drown us all.

Courtesy The Express Tribune