It’s a 90-minute drive from central Tel Aviv to a border crossing between Israel and Gaza north of Khan Yunis where we are scheduled the enter the Strip. Along the journey we pass Ashdod, Ashqelon and Sederot; cities which have been the recipients of hundreds of rocket attacks emanating from Gaza over many years. We also pass close by the US-led Civil Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) at Kiryat Gat. The Israeli press report that the CMCC is under pressure from numerous countries who may withdraw their personnel, believing the centre to be ‘directionless’. It was established to monitor the ceasefire, mould policies for post-war Gaza, and facilitate the entry of more aid. Amongst the complainants is reported to be France. Perhaps they were expecting updated copies of Napoleon’s Civil Code to be available to explain, in an easily readable form, how you reconstruct a war zone like Gaza.

Barely 40 kilometres to the east of Gaza is Be’er Sheva  the site of extraordinary Australian bravery in 1917. We are also close to Nova and the numerous kibbutzim where Hamas committed their atrocities on 7 October 2023, and which, to her eternal shame, Foreign Minister Penny Wong refused to visit when in Israel in January 2024. At the IDF briefing at a military base close to the border, we are warned that there are snipers in buildings in the Hamas-controlled parts of Gaza. ‘When we are in Gaza stand apart from each other please,’ we are warned. Just eight kilometres south-west of Khan Yunis is Rafah where the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar met the IDF for the final time in October 2024. Ultimately what extraordinary devastation Sinwar, his late brother Mohammed, and their colleague Deif wreaked on the Palestinian and Arab communities on 7 October. It is believed that they didn’t inform the Iranians before the attack. Perhaps if they had, we wouldn’t be here today.

Days earlier at lunch with a doctor in Israel who was working at one of the major hospitals on that horrific day, he refuses to tell me what he saw when the dead and injured were brought in to his emergency ward. I ask for specifics but he refuses, beyond saying he didn’t believe such butchery and savagery could exist in the minds and acts of any human being. He simply refers to the Hamas Palestinian perpetrators as ‘animals’. Later he explains that the trust between the Jews and the Palestinians – especially in Gaza and the West Bank – is irretrievably broken. ‘How can we live side-by-side with such monsters?’ He goes on to say that no serious person in Israel talks any longer of a two-state solution describing it more as a European fantasy. ‘The Jews have been here for thousands of years. Perhaps Sinwar thought he could achieve what no one else through the generations has been able to do. Now he knows the answer.’ We leave the military base in heavily armoured vehicles embedded with the IDF, wearing the obligatory flak jacket and helmet. We enter Gaza through a massage steel gate, pass a large number of aid trucks and after three kilometres arrive at a viewing point overlooking the town of Deir al Balah. Journalists and soldiers then mill around doing interviews, taking photos and hearing briefings. Hamas are still very active along the yellow line, we are told, a reference to the temporary line which separates the Hamas-dominated parts of Gaza from the IDF safe zone constituted by a series of yellow concrete blocks which run the length of Gaza. ‘They still fire at IDF soldiers, plant IED’s and continue to make use of tunnels,’ according to IDF spokesman Nadav Shoshani.

A mere five kilometres in the distance  is the Mediterranean. If Israel is a postage stamp on the world map Gaza is a sliver. The young soldiers are keen to hear about Australia and about Bondi. One asks about the Adass Synagogue bombing. They ask if I think Trump will take Iran. After 40 minutes we are gone.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in feeling a deep sense of dread crossing into the Gaza Strip after all we have seen and heard over the last two years. There is devastation everywhere. Lives ruined and cities destroyed. Sadly this is the fate of the Palestinian people who have been held hostage by the brutal Hamas regime in Gaza for almost 20 years. Their suffering is incalculable. Many no doubt long for the serenity overwhelmingly enjoyed by 2.1 million of their fellow Arabs who live in relative peace in Israel. Such is the accident of birth.

It’s hardly a revelation to say that the quintessential problem at the heart of the Arab/Israeli conflict is, as it has been since 1948, the refusal of the Palestinian leadership in Gaza, the West Bank and parts of the Arab world to accept that Israel has a right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people. At lunch in Melbourne on 10 September, 2001, I asked Bill Clinton why Arafat didn’t sign the peace proposal Clinton had crafted with Ehud Barak, himself and Arafat. Clinton said that in the end he wasn’t sure Arafat wanted peace – which I translated to mean Arafat couldn’t deliver peace on behalf of the Palestinian people.

Despite centuries of persecution, the Jews of Israel and worldwide are an extraordinary people; grounded in faith, love and a belief that if they don’t defend their homeland – at all costs, at all times, and despite the consequences – then all could be lost. Because of his support for the Jewish people, in this country many people see Donald Trump as the new Eli Cohen. The breakdown in trust is amplified by the fact that Israel has attempted peace with its Palestinian neighbours on countless occasions since 1948. Yet, as the Board of Peace is formed, the will of the Israeli government remaining steadfast, and with a growing number of American Middle-Eastern allies believing the time has come to end the Palestinian Islamic terrorism of Hamas and its allies – the hope for a better future is building in Israel.