News Headlines a little while back about the situation in Gaza understood it as 'a ceasefire' rather than as 'peace'.

That is a useful distinction for peace is not simply the absence of conflict.

Peace implies a situation of well-being that enables people to sustain a full life, not simply survive, but also to grow and develop, and dare to dream of a better tomorrow. I Suppose many are familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In that case, the first is for food and shelter, the next for safety and security, the third is the social level of relationships, then things which build our esteem and independence, and ultimately, we have the level often called self-actualisation, where we aspire to our hopes and aspirations with some prospect of attaining some of them. The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip people are not in a position to do much more than try and survive at the moment. The Cease-Fire improved their safety albeit marginally, and one must add temporarily.

On the other side of the world, we have the 47th President now suggesting that the Gaza strip needs to be cleared out and that the Palestinians should be re-settled, though, interestingly, he has not offered them North Dakota or Wisconsin for that project. This proposition is essentially a mindless obscenity. Beyond the oblique universe of the likes of Netanyahu and Trump, the simple writing off of 2,500,000 people as collateral damage for a real estate proposition is beyond unacceptable.