In the shadow of death, despair, and seemingly perpetual conflict, the fresh echoes of Hamas attacks emanate through the fraught avenues of Israel, painting a dystopian image far removed from the aspirations of peaceful coexistence we might foster or hope for. It’s a lamentable visual, with over 1,000 innocent lives cruelly extinguished, that triggers a palpable chill, edging along our collective spine, guiding a haunting question through our minds: “How did it get to this?”

The violence and most reporting we’ve seen from the mainstream press paints a bleak portrait of an Israel plunged into mourning by monstrous attacks; it, however, doesn’t journey into the dense fog that is the convoluted realm of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

The complexity of the Israel-Palestine dynamic isn’t merely a chessboard of military and political moves. It’s an emotional, historical, and sociocultural tapestry that’s been woven through generations of endured pain, aspirations, and intermittent bursts of hope and despair on both sides. With each strand intertwining through narratives of survival, identity, and justice, the resulting scenario is anything but binary.

Pick a group of teenagers from Israel and Palestine, and chances are they’d 100% want a peaceful solution to coexistence.