@Loony Party - you mean 'right' i hope ;D
@elroi - Hamas may not be entirely right, but I don't see you reasoning. Hamas attack Israel to make themselves look weak? I don't think so. I think they attack Israel the combat the near total control Israel would otherwise have over them (like in the West Bank). They attack Israel to combat the alien invaders who have taken what they consider their land. I do agree that the most important factor are the regular people and the effect this is having on them.
@Gnullbegg
added ideological baggage
Judaism/capitalism vs. Islam/communism (going with your historic reference here). There, done no?
Everyone and their mother feels like they have a stake in it; not just the people living in the state of Israel and the Palestinian mandates (plus of course the millions of Palestinians held hostage in utterly dismal refugee camps all around the Arab world).
That's a pretty good brief summary of the cause of this. How complicated was that? The situation is not as complicated as other situations, or at the very least, not
more complicated. Often, you will consider a situation more complicated when it is portrayed in the media more. Because of this, you see much more about the scenario, obviously causing you to ponder it for longer. Also, when something is front page news it is discussed much more, with more support for both sides of a debate, making the issue seem less clear than it may be. When did people ever talk about the Sri Lankan civil war? As it came to it's bloody conclusion,
one news channel in the UK featured it (kudos to Channel 4 in that respect), despite it being such an event.