The complete idiot’s guide to MidEast peace (part67)

Read more: US denies report that Kerry’s team has been dismantled | The Times of Israel

“Even if these negotiations eventually don’t work, in the nine months, you have put the issues on the table,” she said.

“You’ve talked about them. Maybe you’ve seen something where, whenever we start this process again, it will help us make progress faster or make better progress or go further.”

This would tend to depict the triumph of hope over experience, the expectation that both sides will, one day, come together in common cause and unity of purpose.

Well, that day is not today. Nor is it likely to be any other day. Indeed, the thought of Hell freezing over comes more readily to mind than the prospect of all those involved managing to settle their differences, issues that have been contested by them and fought over for generations.

But, if the possibility of such a day were to be entertained, what would it take to bring it into being?

1. A worldwide epiphany of intense religious experience?

2. A sudden intellectual reawakening, a perception impressed upon the overwhelming majority of those currently resident upon this small planet?

3. The direct intervention of G-d, Jehovah, Allah, Krishna or whatever supreme deity might have concerns for the fate of humankind?

4. A financial inducement deemed of of such universal worth and vast excess that everyone in receipt of this would be hard pressed to do anything other than finding ways to spend it all?

5.. A dawning realisation that the matter is never going to be resolved, will continue to claim many more lives and vast amounts of expenditure unless the most radical of measures can be applied to the situation?

Well, options 1 through 4 might be deliverable but not without serious questions asked as to their provenance and, indeed, their necessity.

Number 5, on the other hand, is quite understandable. It is born out of desperate need and the awareness that nothing less will be able to withstand the rigours and depredations of a conflict which has survived for generations and, in retrospect, grown so much worse in all that time.

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