The fundamentalists of both sides will never agree
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Israel remains an anachronism.
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I don't know whether to agree or not. What are the pracical applications of this statement ?
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I am not implying, of course, that Israel should cease to exist!
Bu the tenets underlying the very creation of the state of Israel, which also determine Israel's policies ever since its creation, have become absurdly anachronistic!
Israel was created as a state by Jews for the Jews, with exclusivity all over it. (Herzl's principles were "improved" by the Reformed Zionists of Zabotinsky.) This seemed absolutely legitimate, if not vital, in the 19th century. It was the era of nationalism. It was also the time when anti-semitism reared its ugly head quite forcibly on the world stage, once again, as witnessed, among other events, by the Czarist pogroms in Russia and the Dreyfuss affair in France.
But not anymore! Creating and running a state now by the Ruritanians for Ruritanians under stricty Ruritanian customs and laws is silly, if not criminal! (Which is why, incidentally, the Balkans remain, too, an anachronism. Witness the Kosovo mess.) The modern model for nation-states should be the United States of America, which is our most advanced model -- end of story!
This is why I'm saying that the solution to the problem (although it is quite a romantic one, by now) is the one-state solution. A country that encompasses ALL the disputed land, perhaps even including the damn Golan heights, from Gaza to the Jordan river. With the same rules, laws and regulations that apply in every western democracy, explicitly forbidding one nation or religion runnign roughshod over another. With its external security firmly guaranteed by UN and America.
Now THAT would propel the whole of the Middle East towards modernisation, democratization and secularization, you betcha!...
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