The complete idiot’s guide to Middle East peace (part4)

TV report: Abbas said ‘no’ to Obama on 3 core peace issues | The Times of Israel

Taken at face value, this does illustrate the intense difficulties that any such peace proposal must overcome to be successfully applied.

The rationale that allows the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to proceed ever onward is derived largely from their two respective narratives. These are the ones that both sides have relied upon to maintain their contest over issues they have had with each other for the best part of at least seven decades.

1. Israelis legitimately purchased their original settlement areas, were then obliged to defend them and, in doing so, ended up possessed of territories seized in battle from states next door who had attacked or were about to attack their tiny enclave in the Middle East.

2. Palestinians view the subject somewhat differently. They see themselves as forced from ancestral homelands by Israeli territorial expansion and have since been made to settle as permanent refugees in neighbouring countries or remain confined to areas of land still sealed off or dominated by descendants of their erstwhile usurpers.

And these twin mindsets have not moderated to any material extent during all of times gone by.

After 66 years and many thousands of deaths later, a case can surely be made to deliberately merge these narratives and so begin a new storyline, one that directs both peoples along a common path and into a future far brighter than that currently in prospect.

Or do you think everyone is going to say ‘no’ to that as well?

www.laxiankey.com – ‘for those of us with better things to do.’