{"id":310,"date":"2008-03-07T12:55:08","date_gmt":"2008-03-07T20:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2008\/03\/07\/middle-east-complexities\/"},"modified":"2008-03-07T12:55:08","modified_gmt":"2008-03-07T20:55:08","slug":"middle-east-complexities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2008\/03\/middle-east-complexities\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle East Complexities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim<\/a> poin\u00adted<\/a> at a piece list\u00ading immor\u00adal solu\u00adtions for Gaza<\/a>, a piece which nicely proves that find\u00ading a good solu\u00adtion is impossible, and find\u00ading the best of the bad solu\u00adtions often seems equally impossible.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only per\u00adson flab\u00adber\u00adgas\u00adted by the whole Israel\/Lebanon\/Palestine mess, and I\u2019ve read a few books try\u00ading to make some sense of it. The only one I whole\u00adheartedly recom\u00admend is Thomas<\/a> Fried\u00adman<\/a>\u2019s From Beirut to Jer\u00adu\u00ads\u00adalem<\/a>. The book is old; it was first pub\u00adlished in 1989, but it is (unfor\u00adtu\u00adnately) still rel\u00adev\u00adant in that none of the prob\u00adlems it describes have been solved. Many of the people are no longer in power, or no longer on this earth, but the prob\u00adlems they did\u00adn\u2019t man\u00adage to solve are still here, still affect\u00ading the lives of those who live in that part of this world.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to try to sum\u00admar\u00adize the book; there are lots of reviews out there. Suf\u00adfice to say that if you don\u2019t know much about the Middle East, but do want to know some\u00adthing about why people dis\u00adagree so viol\u00adently and why a solu\u00adtion still seems so heart\u00adbreak\u00adingly out of reach, get this book and read it. You may dis\u00adagree with lots of it, you may find char\u00adac\u00adters described with\u00adin it worthy of respect or you may find them despic\u00adable. I learned a lot about some of the fault-lines with\u00adin Leban\u00adon, Israel, and Palestine soci\u00adet\u00adies, and the hor\u00adrible con\u00adsequences that have come of well-mean\u00ading actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim poin\u00adted at a piece list\u00ading immor\u00adal solu\u00adtions for Gaza, a piece which nicely proves that find\u00ading a good solu\u00adtion is impossible, and find\u00ading the best of the bad solu\u00adtions often seems equally impossible. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only per\u00adson flab\u00adber\u00adgas\u00adted by the whole Israel\/Lebanon\/Palestine mess, and I\u2019ve read a few books try\u00ading to \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cMiddle East Complexities\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}