Anybody who has read Shakespeare knows the world is a complex place. How could Othello have known that Iago was plotting against him? But then he goes and kills his wife, wounds Iago, kills himself, and if that’s not enough, Emilia is also killed. Shakespeare teaches us that nothing is what it seems, and so one must continue to peel the onion of complexity. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can also be deceiving. How easy and comforting it can be to simply say Israel is right, or Palestine is right. But, like Shakespeare, the conflict is much more enigmatic than simply choosing sides and calling the whole thing off.

This issue is one of the most complex in the world of politics today. Great leaders like Winston Churchill, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have all taken a stab at a solution. Now that the Israelis have invaded Gaza, there has been a renewed fixation on the conflict. One could trace this conflict back thousands of years, but for space’s sake, and the sake of you readers who don’t want to fall asleep reading this in the lecture hall — only to wake up and find the teacher has instructed everybody to look at you until you wake up — I’ll keep this short.

There is no question that Israel has a right to defend itself, as any other state would do if they were under attack. But destroying Hamas is not a feasible option to quell the violence. Hamas is the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people of Gaza, which may confuse many people, and basically, the Palestinian people are pissed off (I said I would keep this short). There are about 4 to 5 million Palestinian refugees, according to UN statistics, and most of them live in Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the West Bank. Some have assimilated into the societies there, especially Jordan and Syria, but many live in refugee camps, which induce dire, impoverished conditions.

The word “campsâ€