Anyway

Tim poin­ted at a piece list­ing immor­al solu­tions for Gaza, a piece which nicely proves that find­ing a good solu­tion is impossible, and find­ing the best of the bad solu­tions often seems equally impossible.

I’m sure I’m not the only per­son flab­ber­gas­ted by the whole Israel/Lebanon/Palestine mess, and I’ve read a few books try­ing to make some sense of it. The only one I whole­heartedly recom­mend is Thomas Fried­man’s From Beirut to Jer­u­s­alem. The book is old; it was first pub­lished in 1989, but it is (unfor­tu­nately) still rel­ev­ant in that none of the prob­lems it describes have been solved. Many of the people are no longer in power, or no longer on this earth, but the prob­lems they did­n’t man­age to solve are still here, still affect­ing the lives of those who live in that part of this world.

I’m not going to try to sum­mar­ize the book; there are lots of reviews out there. Suf­fice to say that if you don’t know much about the Middle East, but do want to know some­thing about why people dis­agree so viol­ently and why a solu­tion still seems so heart­break­ingly out of reach, get this book and read it. You may dis­agree with lots of it, you may find char­ac­ters described with­in it worthy of respect or you may find them despic­able. I learned a lot about some of the fault-lines with­in Leban­on, Israel, and Palestine soci­et­ies, and the hor­rible con­sequences that have come of well-mean­ing actions.