The complete idiot’s guide to Mideast peace – part 225

One Palestinian dead, dozens wounded in West Bank clashes | The Times of Israel  ‘ Hundreds protests against IDF operation in Gaza’

Yet one more death, another sad statistic to add to a tally that has already far exceeded some 100,000 souls, a figure likely to be increased by many more in days ahead.

This would appear to be one part of the staggering price paid since way back in 1948, the official birth-year of the State of Israel and a somewhat notional starting point at which to begin the record of such deaths.

With well in excess of 100,000 people dying, primarily as a result of what might be taken as 6 million previous deaths, a remarkable consistency can be observed in the use of some very negative forces. Two versions of the ‘status quo,’ one past and one present, seem tied to big numbers.

Is there then any way to turn such ‘negativity’ into something ‘positive’?

Here it might be recalled from schooldays that mathematics has long offered a somewhat bizarre solution. To turn any negative number into a positive requires only that it be multiplied or divided by another negative.

So, does such a ‘negative’ quantity exist and can it ever be made to marry up with the already very negative Palestinian-Israeli situation?

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

This represents the exact antithesis to past and current conditions, those endured by generations on both sides. It is a complete inversion of the system so long in use over decades, the opposite of what would normally be the standard operating procedure upon which this conflict has been founded and still sustains itself in being. It is also extremely negative but that, of course, is now its most desirable characteristic, an asset which, upon insertion into the present set-up, can change the polarity of it from a minus to a plus in virtually no time at all.

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” –Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at St. Louis, 1964