The front page of Sunday’s Washington Post was splashed with escalation of the Israel Palestine Conflict into a ground war. However, on Saturday Andy Carvin decided to use the web to put the size of these countries into perspective by contrasting scale satellite photos of both the Israel region and both Washington D.C. and New York City.

Having lived both places, the photos were a bit of a shock. However, turning them into overlays provided a bigger punch. Taking the baton from Mr. Carvin, here is the Israel-Palestine conflict in terms that an east coast American can understand.

I prepared these in two batches. The first is a direct overlay from the raw satellite photos. In the second photo, I rotated the Middle Eastern map so that Jerusalem was aligned with a major American city. In the case of the DC map, that city is Baltimore, and with New York it’s Manhattan.

Middle East over DC Raw	Middle East and DC Rotated
Middle East and NYC	Middle East and NYC Rotated

The end results cast an eerie shiver on the concept of distance that even I myself grew used to. If Jerusalem were placed in Manhattan, than both Gasa and the Gasa Strip would be located on Long Island. Placing Jerusalem over Baltimore puts Gasa in Loudon County and the Gasa Strip in northern Prince William.

These are short roadtrips or a handful of stops on the LIRR in the States. Across the world, they’re a shooting war.

An interesting bit of perspective, no matter how you feel about the conflict.