Will the miracle baby Shayma Shiekh al-Eid herald a long awaited peace in the Gaza region? By the latest news reports it doesn’t look like it. Israel and Gaza continue to pound each other even as I pen these words.

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God’s ways are baffling then. Towards what purpose did God almighty bring this tiny creature alive and kicking in this world from a dead mother’s womb? Has God granted her life only to snatch it away in a few days? After all more children and civilians seem to be bearing the brunt of Israeli fire than the so called terrorists.

But then it is not the merciful almighty who is pounding the Middle-east with untold miseries.

God gave us a beautiful undivided – unbounded – unfettered Earth to be enjoyed, nurtured and cherished. It’s we humans who have made it a habit to draw lines of blood across the very face of our mother Earth.

First we draw lines in blood and then we spill more blood fighting over those lines. Lines which will either vanish or get replaced by new bloody lines in a few hundred years. Where are lines that marked the ancient empires of Assyrians, Babylonians, Byzantine and Ottomans? Each of these empires and many more have coveted and occupied the land under contention at different times. The empires have vanished and the lines have been redrawn in blood many times over.

We humans, specifically the fighting Israelis and Gazans, have forgotten that nothing that man makes lasts forever. Only what God creates is supreme and is blessed to last till eternity. And while the men are busy fighting it’s the humans who are suffering. Women, kids, innocent civilians are being mercilessly butchered but towards what end – towards the idea of an empire which can at best be described as transient. No amount or duration of bloodshed has ever made any victor eternal.

Then if there is no chance to be God or God-like, what right do the warring sides have to fight over which isn’t theirs in the first place? What right do they have to snatch away baby Shayma’s precious life which is a special gift from God himself? Baby Shayma has as much right as any other child to grow and spread her wings in a peaceful surrounding.