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It was a blazing hot day in Gaza, the sort of day that would raise already simmering tension to boiling point.
The Palestinian group, Hamas, had ordered rockets fired into Israel and Israeli forces had struck back. I had been in Rafah, a town on the border of Gaza and Egypt.
The border was blockaded and I was there to do a story on the elaborate tunnels used to smuggle food and weapons. Now, I was wondering how I would get back.
Gaza is chaotic and chokingly congested. People jostle in market places thick with the smell of roasting meat and rich, dark coffee. The little coastal strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth. It had become ground zero in a conflict without end.
The Israelis had pulled out of the area but maintained control over the movement of goods and people. The blockade remained an open wound.
The pull-out was supposed to be a circuit-breaker; Palestinians would be handed control. This is what an eventual two-state solution would resemble.
But in this part of the world nothing is that simple.
Palestinians rained down rockets and Israel struck back hard, bombing suspected militant sites. In both cases civilians had been caught in the crossfire.
On this day with my television crew, I tried to return to our base in Gaza City. It should have taken us about an hour; nearly 12 hours later I was wishing I had walked.
Israeli forces had dug an enormous hole in the road, no cars could cross. On the hills soldiers hurried about in jeeps and trained their rifle sights on the people below.
Hour after hour we were stuck, the traffic jammed with nowhere to go and the sun burning down. Children cried for water and old people were stretched across seats, some finding shelter in the shade between cars. All around me anger was building; unprompted, people were screaming into our camera. The Israeli troops occasionally fired warning shots past us to try to stop us filming.
Solution isn't hard, but each side has different versions
I have recalled that day as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Australia this week. He was greeted by a political row; former Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd both supporting the recognition of a Palestinian state.
International frustration has been growing as hopes have faded for a resolution to the dispute. Mr Netanyahu's critics accuse him of being unwilling to compromise. They point to the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank as one of the biggest obstacles to Palestinian aspirations for their own state.
Mr Netanyahu says his priority is the protection of his own people and sent a message to Mr Hawke and Mr Rudd.
"I ask both former prime ministers: what kind of state would it be, that they're advocating? A state that calls for Israel's destruction? A state whose territory would be used immediately for radical Islam?" Mr Netanyahu said.
Lawyer and Australian Jewish community leader Mark Leibler says Israel is prepared to compromise — up to a point.
"I can tell you what they have been prepared to give up — some sharing in relation to Jerusalem, land swaps to compensate for the major settlement block where 80 per cent of the Jews in the West Bank live. But what they're not prepared to compromise on, what I wouldn't be prepared to compromise on, is their security," Mr Leibler said.
This week I spoke to Mr Leibler and Palestinian-Australian lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah. They are smart, considered people, albeit on opposite sides. I wanted an answer to a simple question: why is a resolution so hard?
"It's not hard, it is about the will of Israel to comply with international law. What Israel needs to do is clear, it needs to comply with United Nations resolutions, it needs to stop the illegal occupation," Ms Abdel-Fatteh said.
"It ought not be hard but it becomes very hard when you have Israel withdrawing from Gaza and you have 10,000 rockets aimed at her civilian population," Mr Leibler said.
On even this most fundamental question, they were at loggerheads.
Their personal conversation echoed the bigger political debate. Mr Leibler accused Ms Abdel-Fattah of not wanting to recognise Israel's right to exist. Ms Abdel-Fattah said Israel continued to blockade Gaza causing misery for Palestinian civilians.
"The framing of this debate is wrong, as if there are two equal sides," Ms Abdel-Fattah said.
"Mark mentions Gaza, but forgets to mention an illegal siege of Gaza where 1.7 million Palestinians are penned up in prison-like conditions."
One strikes, the other strikes back
This dispute — Israeli versus Palestinian — has raged for so long, any casual observer could be forgiven for forgetting what it was all about in the first place.
Just this week, Israeli Education Minister and right-wing politician Naftali Bennett quoted the Bible as the foundation for the Jewish claim to Israel.
Today's conflict has a more recent history.
The state of Israel was established in 1948 but there was already a thriving Jewish community in the British protectorate of Palestine.
Arab states declared war on Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled; an exodus known as the "nakba" or catastrophe.
Israeli victory extended the borders further into what was expected to be Palestinian territory.
Arab defeat in the Six Day War in 1967 further pushed back the borders.
The fighting has never really ended.
"The attitude of the Arab countries was no recognition," Mr Leibler said.
"Why should they recognise … which indigenous population will accept another coming and dismantling and displacing it," Ms Abdel-Fatteh interrupted.
Ms Abdel-Fatteh said the two-state solution — a homeland for both peoples — was dead. Israeli occupation of the West Bank and settlement building, she said, killed it. Mr Leibler is more optimistic, but it requires Palestinian recognition.
That day in Gaza was just one day in so many. The people waited for the cool of the evening and carrying what they could, walked the remaining 10 kilometres or so into Gaza City.
They would likely not even remember it, but for me it was a day that gave me a glimpse into what divides these peoples in this ancient land. One side strikes, the other strikes back.
The world has looked for a roadmap to peace, and on that day the road itself was a metaphor: torn apart, divided. One people on one side facing the other.
Topics: world-politics, territorial-disputes, israel, palestinian-territory-occupied
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