No breakthrough seen in last-ditch Mideast talks | The Times of Israel

Do Israelis and Palestinians have any common agenda that can ever be shared between them?

In their battle with each other for control of the land both claim to be theirs, they have lost all sense of direction in how to proceed and thus cannot agree on anything that might resolve the many major issues that still divide them. Indeed, life and death decisions are often taken with so little regard for their immediate and long-term consequence that going around in ever-decreasing circles might best describe the itinerary that such erratic behaviour seems to follow.

Surely, in this day and age, some means of taking hold of the conflict can be found, some urgent course correction made upon its massively misaligned trajectory. If no such remedy is forthcoming, then the entire dispute can claim no purpose, no destination, no validity for the excesses and inconsistencies that infest it in such large measure.

And where then does all this take us?

Towards a tomorrow with so little hope of rescue from the situation that future generations must inherit it as a curse, another unwelcome burden from the past. All its problems and complexities will remain fully intact but in an even greater amount of disrepair. It would be as if we ourselves had made no effort whatsoever to gain ascendancy over its vile nature, having yielded it the victory far too easily and too soon.

Is that what we want to leave behind us? Is our own inheritance to be eternal regret at not being able to influence or modify matters much beyond their present state?

Rather than let that happen, we should all be prepared to move heaven and earth in order to avoid the passing on of so miserable a legacy.

Well, maybe just ‘earth’ for starters; then let’s see how we go from there.

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