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Enemies and neighbours

Reading Ian Black's account of the Balfour declaration with heart sinking. The basis for sharing the land disappeared a hundred years ago:

Weeks after the Paris peace conference [of 1919] ... Zionist officials met to discuss relations with ‘our neighbours’. Ben-Gurion, by now the leader of the Ahdut haAvoda (Labour Unity) movement, was the most eloquent and clear-sighted of the pessimists:

‘Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews,’ he said. 'But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf and nothing can fill this gulf. It is not possible to resolve the conflict between Jewish and Arab interests [only] by sophistry. I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews – even if the Jews learn Arabic. And we must recognise this situation. If we do not acknowledge this and try to come up with ‘remedies’ then we risk demoralisation … We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.”

Ian Black. “Enemies and Neighbors.

This is the biggest mess of all messes in the world, and it infects everything, the tragedy lives on from day to day, each side determined to hurt and punish the other.

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