http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/28/mideast/index.html

This news article is mainly on reporting the escalating violence between Israel and Palestine.  The news article reports that Israel has launched an air-strike in response to the rocket attacks from militants of Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas.  The Israeli air-force targeted Gaza in attempt to terminate the Palestinian terrorist group, which resulted in death of several terrorists and peaceful bystanders.  In retaliation, Hamas also launched attacks in Israeli territory, which inflicted deaths and injuries in Israeli civilian population.  The article eventually went on to the responses of UN and human’s rights organizations on the attacks.  This article is relevant to the course material because we can explain the behavior of both Israeli and Palestinian with game theory.

            Let’s start by constructing a game theory table with two players.  On one side, we have Israel, and on the other side, we have Palestinian terrorist.  Each side is given two choices of action.  One of them is to strike and the other one is not to strike.  The numbers inside of the column represent approval rating of people in Israel and Palestine, and the approval number is in the scale of 0 to 5.  5 is the highest rating and 1 is the lowest rating.  On the top left column, we have a situation where both sides decide to strike which earn them an approval rating of 3 each.  The top right corner of the table is when Palestine strikes and Israel chooses not to strike.  That gives Israel an approval rating of 1 and Palestine an approval rating of 5.  The bottom left column of the table is exactly opposite of the top right column, which gives Israel an approval rating of 5 and Palestine an approval rating of 1.  The bottom right column of the table is when both sides chooses not to strike which give both side an approval rating of 0 since nothing has happened.  From the table we can tell that the dominant strategy for both sides is to strike.  That is why the fighting never stops since the best thing for the both side to do in this situation is to strike back.