The Hamas people are outraged that, after launching nearly daily attacks at Israel from Gaza, the Israel government has named it an ‘enemy entity’ and is considering cutting off fuel, electricity, and water sources to the hostile state. Apparently Hamas prefers calling other nations an “entity”, but not being called one itself, and believes this is unfair collective punishment.

This reaction is emblematic of the asymmetry in the Middle East, often compared to the ‘teen-age’ syndrome of loud defiance serving as psychological cover for abject dependence. Hamas is furious and claims that this proposed separation is a virtual act of war. If so, then two questions arise.

Why would they not welcome such a state of clear-cut armed conflict against the hated Zionist entity, given that they are already constantly rocketing Jews? And second, why not simply make arrangements with Egypt to connect infrastructure, power, and trade, and seal on its own the border with Israel, while developing much closer ties with a brother Arab state? Or alternatively, with Gulf oil money Hamas might develop port facilities to ensure supplies of fuel and export/import trade, or even a power and water plant of their own on the coast.

Most Americans remain baffled about an entity that would continuously try to kill civilians with rockets and then howl when such targets preferred not to provide the rocketeers with the power, fuel, and water necessary to conduct such operations. Of course, the more sophisticated can give us all sorts of reasons why the Israelis’ proposed action is ‘disproportionate’, but they can’t quite account for the Orwellian nature of it all.