What News

So, you're looking at the newspaper, and you see the headline "No New Agreement in Middle East."

Yeah, that's news. Does anyone genuinely believe that the Middle East will ever find peace? I don't. I'm not really being cynical either; I don't believe in Middle East peace.

I think people don't want it. Not really. They want peace in the way that we all want peace, and they want peace in the way that we all want to have our own way, but practically-speaking, I don't think anyone there, or possibly elsewhere, wants peace in a way which doesn't involve wiping the other side out.

Basically, at this point, I'm to the point of saying, you know what, screw all of them. There are reasons we obviously can't do that, but for myself, I don't hold out hope of anything more than things not getting worse. If things stay as bad as they are now and don't get worse, that seems like a success to me. Of course, I'm pretty sure things will get worse; Israel will continue to act unilaterally, the Arab world will continue to prop up a Palestinian resistance to that, the US will continue to prop up Israel, and the Palestinians will continue to commit pointless acts of violence because they're living in a hell-hole from which there is no escape. And if that's the status quo, things can't help but get worse without any change.

It's beyond anything more than stubborn idiocy at this point. No one is willing to back away. Let the other guy win, fight another day, that kind of thing. No one is willing to let it go. And I am not exempting anyone, West, East, Arab, Jew, Christian... anyone who is remotely involved in the area won't let anything go.

So the newspapers will undoubtedly keep reporting the same old news about how things aren't peaceful, but until I see "Peace Comes to Middle East" I won't bother to read the articles. And when I see that headline, I'll know that the crazy fundamentalists were right and I'm in for the End-Times, and I'll have too many other things to worry about.