The debates are important, and they continue. But they are also rather familiar at this point. If you are under the age of 65, the conflict between Israel and its neighbors has been going on for your entire life.

I keep thinking, while considering this new round of violence, of how small the Gaza strip actually is. I was there in 2003 on a freelance assignment for The Stranger, and though my trip from one end of the territory to the other took forever because of Israeli checkpoints that were in place at the time, this was clearly a very little sliver of land that I was traversing.

The Gaza strip encompasses only 140 square miles. (Washington State, to pick a point of comparison, encompasses about 70,000 square miles.) The length of the territory? Twenty-five miles—less than most Americans' daily commute to work. The width? Seven miles at the widest point, four miles in other places.

Tiny.

With over 1.4 million people inside.