One Final, And Fascinating, Article On Israel vs. Palestine

Andrew Ducker tipped me off to this amazing article that details John Kerry’s last attempt to negotiate a peace between Israel and Palestine.  It’s a long article, but that’s because it has to be, showing exactly how complex it is to work with two sides that don’t trust each other in the slightest.  And two sides that each have external pressures of their own, where even the act of negotiating erodes their power base.
The last paragraph sums it all up quite nicely:

“I see it from a mathematical point of view,” said Avi Dichter, the former chief of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency. “The American effort will always be multiplied by the amount of trust between the two leaders. So if Kerry’s pressure represents the number five, and then Obama’s help brings the American effort to ten, it really doesn’t matter. You’re still multiplying it by zero. The final result will always be zero.”

But still.  The article’s well worth reading, if only to see exactly why simple solutions almost always fail. There’s a lot of things that these experienced men could have done better in hindsight, but with all of the factors converging on a high-stakes situation, who could tell at the time what was going to be the fracture point?  Especially when people were looking to fracture it?