The scorpions of Gaza...

"You can't negotiate with someone who is still firing at you..."

There is an old story which has been translated into English. It is one many of us have heard in our youth. It goes as follows:

A turtle was happily swimming along a river when a scorpion hailed it from the shore.
A scorpion, being a very poor swimmer, asked a turtle to carry him on his back across a river. "Are you mad?" exclaimed the turtle. "You'll sting me while I'm swimming and I'll drown."
"My dear turtle," laughed the scorpion, "if I were to sting you, you would drown and I would go down with you, and drown as well. Now where is the logic in that?"
The turtle thought this over, and saw the logic of the scorpion's statement. "You're right!" cried the turtle. "Hop on!" The scorpion climbed aboard and halfway across the river the scorpion gave the turtle a mighty sting. As they both sank to the bottom, the turtle resignedly said:
"Do you mind if I ask you something? You said there'd be no logic in your stinging me. Why did you do it?"
"It has nothing to do with logic," the drowning scorpion sadly replied. "It's just my nature."

I have thought of this story many times as it relates to what is going on in Gaza. Hamas, who has control of the government, will not stop firing rockets into Israel. Even though all Hamas has are crude rockets and Israel has state of the art jet fighters, they still fire rockets. The result is bloodshed, heavily favored on the side of Israel.

Today, the most recent peace talks broke down again. Why? Rockets were being fired into Israel. As the negotiators were at the table in Egypt, rockets started to fly into Israel again. I dare say if a leader of Hamas was caught and questioned why he did it, why he would dash any chance of peace with Israel, knowing that Gaza would take the worst of it, his response would be simple - it is in our nature. Just like the scorpion had no control over his actions, neither does Hamas.