The complete idiot’s guide to MidEast peace (part54)

Do you ever get the feeling that a real, solid, no-nonsense peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians is just not going to happen? And by that I do mean never, not even in a month of Sundays.

Come on, be honest. It’s been 66 years by the official reckoning and, let’s face it, there is still nothing on the horizon, no prospects whatsoever whereby both communities can find in each other the rationale and discipline required to coexist together in even the most tentative of harmonies.

So what to do?

1. Wait on yet another initiative, one along the lines of that pursued by Mr. Kerry who, it must be said, seems to have done his level best to produce the peace ‘rabbit’ out of what, by now, has become a very old and battered ‘hat.’

2. Appeal to the religious sensibilities held in common by all sides, asking adherents from every belief system in the region to observe toleration and apply the norms of civilised behaviour.

3. Threaten each of the parties involved with the direst of economic consequences and the total withholding of whatever day-to-day funding is currently being directed towards them.

4. Throw the whole thing up as a bad job, sensing in it a situation most unlikely to get any better and certainly possessing all the qualities for becoming a great deal worse.

Accepting for the moment that only these four options might now be available, then adding a fifth.to the list would not appear unreasonable.

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

As to which of these might be chosen is a matter for some speculation.

But which one has sufficient power and continuity to actually go forward and remedy the situation is not.