The Middle Eastern chessboard has been moving pieces for more than seven decades that always seem to return to the same point. Since UN Resolution 181, which in 1947 drew two squares (one Jewish and one Arab) over the former British Mandate of Palestine, the game has never stopped getting more complicated. The boundaries drawn in New York never managed to calm tempers in Jerusalem, Jaffa, or Hebron. For many, that map was the truncated promise of two states; for others, the birth certificate of a dilemma with an indefinite deadline.

The following year, Israel proclaimed its independence and absorbed a human torrent fleeing devastated Europe. Between 1948 and 1952, almost 740,000 Jewish immigrants arrived, 140,000 of them Holocaust survivors, ready to build a home where Arab villages, orange groves, and a handful of port cities had previously predominated. The displacement was no small matter, as some 726,000 people (according to UN calculations) left their towns for Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza, or the eastern bank of the Jordan River, planting the word "Nakba" in Palestinian memory and the diplomatic agenda.

Over the years, the 1949 green line became a spider web. After the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza; half a century later, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements that the Security Council qualifies as "violating international law." The result is a territorial puzzle where maps need longer footnotes and where roads sometimes begin under Palestinian sovereignty, cross Israeli jurisdiction, and end at a control post under military administration. How not to get lost?

Those who view the conflict from afar usually divide it into two chapters: politics and faith. But the script also incorporates economics, security, geology (due to the Leviathan gas field), and a pinch of creative geopolitics courtesy of Washington, Tehran, Cairo, and Riyadh. Each actor enters with their own script; the United States promises diplomatic umbrella to Israel; Iran finances militias in Gaza and Lebanon; Egypt guards the Rafah border. Among so many raised hands, the vote of the average citizen (Jewish, Muslim, or Christian) seems to dilute, even though it's their daily life that pays the interest on the great regional debt.

Just look at the latest escalation. Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023, left around 1,200 dead in Israel and 251 hostages, data that the Israeli government itself has ratified. The military response transformed Gaza into a bombed strip where, according to its Ministry of Health, more than 54,000 Palestinians have died, mostly civilians; other UN sources speak of similar figures and add warnings of famine. Meanwhile, dozens of humanitarian workers and journalists have also fallen, some in crossfire, others in direct attacks.

Given such a toll, how can there still be voices insisting on a binary reading? Perhaps because cycles of violence produce selective amnesia. An attack erases the memory of the previous eviction; a demolition eclipses last month's rocket rain. In the end, indignation is recycled like plastic and melts, molds, and is thrown again at the neighbor. Meanwhile, diplomacy improvises temporary truces, prisoner exchanges, or humanitarian corridors that open when headlines lose audience.

Questions about identities and legitimacies also float. Some critics point out that Israel, even defining itself as a Jewish and democratic state, administers territories without granting full citizenship to millions of Palestinians; others reply that the Palestinian Authority lacks a fresh electoral mandate and that Hamas governs Gaza without separation of powers worthy of a political science manual. If virtue lies in the middle ground, it remains to be discovered where that "center" is when the compass spins between occupation, terrorism, right to defense, and right to self-determination.

In that landscape, the press carries the task of counting numbers that sometimes seem like barcodes of suffering. Are they reliable? Skepticism is understandable; Gaza's Ministry of Health answers to the de facto government, and the Israeli army investigates its own incidents. A neutral referee is missing to count corpses as votes are counted. Until then, every balance will be provisional, and post-truth will continue to gain advantage.

However, the data suggests something indisputable: military asymmetry is evident, but civilian vulnerability strikes both sides. Tel Aviv fears rockets over its suburbs; Gaza fears the sky will open without warning. To ask who is right without asking who suffers would be like opining on global warming without looking at the thermometer, it would look ingenious, but would be blind to the human experience underlying the statistics.

And Palestine? Today it consists of fragmented West Bank, besieged Gaza, and a diaspora numbering in the millions. Anyone traveling through Amman, Damascus, or Santiago de Chile will find cafés where the key to the lost house hangs over the cash register, a symbol of postponed return. On the Israeli side, memorials rise that remember pogroms and attacks; no one is left out of the sanctuary of pain. Two narratives don't cancel each other out; they coexist, overlap, and sometimes clash like tectonic plates.

Two peoples write the same parcel of land on different sheets. Forty-eight, sixty-seven, seventy-three, eighty-two, two thousand eight, two thousand fourteen, two thousand twenty-three... The dates accumulate like layers of paint on an old door; each one covers the previous one, but wear eventually reveals the old colors. How many coats of varnish can a door support before the hinges give way?

The productive doubt remains, the one every reader should embrace before aligning banners: is it possible to condemn the October 7 attacks and at the same time deplore collective punishment in Gaza? Can one denounce the expansion of settlements and, at the same time, demand security guarantees for Israelis who don't belong to any party? Can someone feel solidarity with Palestinian refugees without ignoring the Jewish trauma that drove the creation of the State of Israel? If the answer to any of those questions is "no," then the debate is not ethical but identitarian, and identity, as we know, doesn't negotiate.

The conclusion, therefore, doesn't dictate a verdict. It proposes a more humble exercise: to put the magnifying glass on nuances and distrust the comfort provided by closed camps. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a superhero saga; it lacks cartoon villains and is scarce in happy endings. Perhaps the most disruptive thing, today, would be to recognize that each slogan on social media is a shortcut and that the entire history doesn't fit in anyone's pocket. Putting the accent on questions, not on trenches, could be the first step to not repeat the eternal play of moving pieces to the same square. Meanwhile, the board is still there, waiting for someone who dares to imagine a different game.