The conflict within As I was leaving Jerusalem, I walked up Jaffa Street, one of the main streets in the city, towards the train station. The street was closed to vehicles, with police and military vehicles and officers at each of the corners. As I reached the train station, I saw a large crowd of Orthodox Jews in black suits with signs in Hebrew and English reading "Shame" and "Don't Sodomize Jerusalem", readying for the culmination of a week of protests of the gay pride parade in Jerusalem. It was just one of the many internal contradictions I saw while in Israel. The same country that has large communities of strictly orthodox, conservative religious groups of all kinds who are able to maintain their religious traditions openly is one that protects the rights of freedom of speech, expression, and sexuality required for a pride parade. The beautiful, mountainous landscapes, the beaches of Tel Aviv, the cobblestone street cafes in Jerusalem filled with laughing, chilled-out young Israelis just a ten-minute walk away from some of the holiest sites of three of the world's monotheistic faiths.

As I entered Ramallah for the last time, I walked into the central intersection. There were at least thirty Fatah-aligned PA gunmen in and around the intersection, standing, heavily armed on the street corners, readying themselves for any responses by Hamas to the moves by Abbas and the new cabinet. I was then picked up by a friend of mine, and over beers and shisha at a chilled cafe, I spoke with him and his Ivy-league educated friends about the Palestinian situation. One girl, a Yale graduate who had just spent the last six months in Rwanda drove me home through an Israeli checkpoint (she has Jerusalem status ID, which allows her more freedom of movement). After showing me her home, which is literally in the shadow of the wall, she talked of her activism and how she is working with an Israeli human-rights organization, and wants to spend the next year really getting to understand Israeli society, perfecting her Hebrew, and continuing her work for Palestine. The occupied Palestinian Territories are also full of contradictions, the home of militants who compete for internal power, corrupt leadership who have impaired the Palestinian cause for their own personal gain, and liberal, well-educated young people who reach out to Israeli society while standing firm in their aspirations for their nation.

There appears to me to be a spectrum of constituents in each of these societies, and I have little reservation attributing relative values to different parts of this spectrum. In Israeli society, the fundamentalist settlers who, on an ostensibly biblical basis invade Palestinian lands, establish settlements, and (often violently) abuse their new Palestinian neighbours (in one relatively tame example, I walked down a now almost deserted old-city street in Hebron that was covered in an improvised chain link roof to shelter the Palestinian shoppers from the garbage, bricks, glass, and feces that the settlers throw on them from above), are at or near the bottom of the spectrum. They have no place in a society that wants peace, and their funding, army protection (in Hebron, 5000 soldiers 'protect' 3000 settlers), and legal support must be withdrawn. At the top of the spectrum are the academics and journalists and politicians and students and ordinary working Israelis who seek constructive engagement with the Palestinians, who strive to ensure that Israeli society faces up to its actions as an occupying state and has open debates as to their morality, legality, and efficacy.

In Palestinian society, the bottom of the spectrum, in my view, would be those corrupt leaders who initiate attacks on Israeli civilians, whose corruption and obsession with power leads them to violent factional clashes and whose minds are not on the end of the Israeli occuption, but instead on the continuation of their own occupation of posts of power and privilege (the amount of money diverted by some Palestinian leaders could put them in the same club as many of the infamous money-grabbing dictators of the past century). These leaders are perhaps the biggest obstacle on the Palestinian side to the end of the occupation, and they must be purged immediately and aggressively. And near or at the top of the spectrum would be those whose commitment to their people comes from a principle of humanity that extends to Israelis as well. Who are steadfast in their resolution and do not shirk their criticism of the injustices to which they are subjected, but who resolutely dislaim violence and instead, with almost Gandhian patience, seek the engagement that can lead to an actual resolution of the conflict.

Perhaps this is not a conflict of one country against the other as much as a debate between those whose minds are open and whose hearts want peace, and those whose fundamentalisms and egocentric ambition paralzye them in a self-reinforcing dynamic of fear, distrust, and eventually hate. Obviously there are still differences between the two parties' positions, but I suspect that these differences would be far easier resolved should the upper ends of the spectrum in Israel and the Palestinian Territories be the ones in charge. In my view, Israeli progressives must, without equivocation, condemn the immoral and unwise system of aggressive settlements, the land-grabs, the slow strangulation of the Palestinian people through control of water and internal roads, and a ridiculous system of internal checkpoints, and admit the reality of the highly discriminatory system that has been constructed. And Palestinian progressives must, without equivocation, condemn violent attacks on Israeli citizens, recognize Israel's existence and disclaim themselves of any intent to the contrary, and oppose the insidious corruption and in-fighting that stall attempts at peace.

When this occurs, it will be the miraculous, beautiful, open, promising elements of both societies that will prevail. The intellectually advanced, innovative, liberal, tolerant Israel will meet the aspiring, engaged, passionate, principled Palestine. It is this conversation that I want to see, and this conversation that, I suggest, will find the best possible conclusion to a conflict that is at the center of our time.  ¶ 5:24 AM