With the death toll mounting to 58 last Monday thanks largely to a trigger-happy Israeli military and smiles all around Tel Aviv and Washington the two-state solution is all but dead and buried. When President Trump decided to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all pretence of a negotiated settlement was effectively thrown out the window and what is happening in Gaza today points to a mindset that

We condemn strongly Israel for its brutal killing of 58 unarmed Palestinians. More than two thousand others have been wounded, and the casualty is mounting. They were protesting in Gaza against shifting the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, effectively recognising the annexation of the holy city by Israel.

Empathy, like all virtues, must have some application to the future. If we do not deeply feel the deaths we are apparently powerless to prevent, how would we be alert to the deaths we might put an end to?

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Makarim Wibisono, resigns as Israel never granted him access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory throughout his mandate.