The complete idiot’s guide to Mideast peace – part 126

The kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers and the current turmoil that this has produced cannot be seen in isolation. Both are manifestations of policies and agendas laid down many lifetimes ago and today are taken as par for the course that each side is playing here. Indeed, were it not for these ingrained mindsets being so prevalent among the parties concerned, the issues between them might well have been settled long before now.

So, can a case be made for introducing a brand-new mindset, one which, by its very nature, must override and make redundant all previous examples of the genre?

Israelis and Palestinians have been in damn near continual conflict for the best part of seven decades. Generations have come and gone without the merest hint of a peace settlement; no arrangement other than what’s been in place for well over half a century has appeared on the scene and the years ahead promise nothing but more of the same or, almost certainly, even worse to come.

Now might be a good time to take stock and try to reconfigure matters in a far less haphazard and more carefully constructed manner. Otherwise, all is destined to end in tears and bring little reward to those left holding the fort after its attackers have finally fled the field. Or they themselves are in full possession of its much contested ruins.

A total realignment of the forces and foibles that have driven the longest conflict in modern history is the only way to halt its progress and put an end to the mayhem and misery churned up in its wake. All the old nostrums used in the past have patently never worked out to anyone’s satisfaction and those presently in vogue can hardly be described as ground-breaking or mind-blowingly innovative.

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

Come on, guys, just for once try something new, different, really radical.

What have you got to lose? Astonish the world! Instill in the rest of us that certainty of belief in someone sensing an end to all this conflict and, if the other side should still resist the suggestion, you will, at the very least, hold the moral high ground thereafter.

And this would be for forever and a day.