Not a unique predicament

Much comment in recent days has assumed that real progress was possible in what is called the Middle East peace process if the old bear had ...

Much comment in recent days has assumed that real progress was possible in what is called the Middle East peace process if the old bear had survived in power. This view seems ill-founded. Sharon was — with great political difficulty — able to lead Israel out of Gaza because only a small minority of Jewish settlers valued anything that was there.

He surely had no intention of allowing any dispensation on the West Bank that might enable the Palestinians to create an economically and socially viable state, never mind to achieve the self-respect indispensable to responsible behaviour…

All over the world, nations jostle for each other’s land, and sometimes fight for it. Border lines in atlases tend to represent pious expressions of hope, rather than facts acknowledged in both adjoining territories. We might fare better in assessing the Israel-Palestine conflict if we viewed it in the context of other such disputes…

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The longstanding confrontation between India and Pakistan about Kashmir is the most dangerous example, because it is capable of precipitating a nuclear showdown. Only his month, Russia highlighted its eagerness to regain hegemony over Ukraine. China’s obsession with recovering Taiwan is the greatest threat to peace in Asia. Indonesia is a teeming muddle of peoples…

It surely makes more sense to consider the Middle East conflict against this background, of widespread impatience with inconvenient frontiers, than to perceive the predicament of Israelis and Palestinians as unique…

It is sometimes said that only Israelis and Palestinians can resolve their differences, that even the US has no real power of mediation. Yet the history of territorial disputes suggests that resolutions are seldom achieved by rational bilateral negotiation. They are almost always imposed either by a dominant third party, or by some decisive catastrophe on the spot, usually a war or a pogrom.

Excerpted from an article by Max Hastings in ‘The Guardian’, January 9

For Kolkata, the IMD has forecast mostly cloudy skies with light to moderate rain or thundershowers on most days through Panchami.

Unprecedented rain submerges Kolkata amidst Durga Puja preparations; train services hit

Cities8 min ago

At least two people were killed as Kolkata woke up to an inundated city on Tuesday morning after heavy overnight rainfall flooded streets, railway tracks, and Metro tracks. The downpour, which began late Monday night and continued past midnight, led to severe waterlogging across major arterial roads and residential areas, paralysing normal life.

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