In the UK,  the customary TV ad break is filled with a traditional ‘making a cuppa’, getting the kettle to boil in order to pour some lovely tea all around.

As the current Palestinian – Israeli confederacy of dunces continues to unfold, the cease fire of five hours has been decreed in order to allow the population to go out and fetch some bare minimum survival kits, namely food and water. Not a day, or 48 hours, but a 5-hour lapse. The cynicism of this never-ending war of the egos is no longer a war in the traditional sense, but a conflict in which top political wankers are at loggerheads about who drops the last bomb and who pisses who last in front of the entire world to witness.

And I say, a war of wankers because I cannot see the hands of women in this conflict, but the pain of the mothers, of the families, of the children. And that should suffice to call truce, and that should be the blade that would sear the air of contempt on both sides of the conflict, Hamas and the Kenesset. But in the heat of the world’s Ecuatorial line, when it’s 45 degrees Celsius and the wind blows from the desert, the testosterone and the infantilism soar to the the roof of each man with the smallest ounce of power. And no matter how many more decades this tit for tat has been going on, and how many human atrocities the population has endured, this war will not end until a female political leader meets another female political leader that would be also immune to the torrid dessert testosterone high.

Until then, the lives offered at the altar of the God of War will still be those of women and children. Worst of all, this war will continue to be a war of mundane routines, with kettle breaks and all. Alarms-panic-bomb-shrapnel-explosion-near-far-stop-anger-panic-more bombs-tears-home-nohome-lost-children-hunger-night-bomb. Until that glorious day when the rocket launchers will be confiscated, and the rifles thrown out of the pram, there will be bombs and breaks for tea in the dessert.

This war will only be over, really over, when the LOVE will be GREATER than the obstinacy, the asinine “mine is bigger than yours- now-let’s-go- for-a-leak-and-a-cuppa-and-a-fag-and-a-kick-about until we fire up the next round, we launch the next missile to the roof tops, kidnap teenagers on the way to school, kill solitary boys on their way to prayer, sharp-shoot children playing on a beach.

This war looks more and more like a fight amongst drunks in a pub. All bravado and no one hitting anyone’s mugface, but a-pushing and a-shoving, and tumbling over innocent bystanders.  This kettle war must be stopped.