Sounds like a tall order I know, but all my life there has been one problem after another ‘over there’ (or some ongoing ones that have lasted 30 years), and I never did quite learn the clear basics. A lot of the news I read tends to assume the reader/listener knows the history of it all and doesn’t explain much of it.
I’m not looking for a poli-sci class here, but a basic rundown of who’s who and what everybody wants?
On preview, I guess I should more clearly define ‘over there’, but I don’t want to restrict it to one geographic area / one problem per se. What I’m trying to understand I guess is the Islamic / Sheite (sp?) / Jewish > Jerusalem/Palestine-area stuff that’s been going on for as long as I can remember.
I found myself getting frustrated recently because I had never had much interest in the Middle East issues, and so had never really paid as much attention as I should have, but when I started to listen to news about it, most reports assume you have a basic knowledge that I just didn’t have, and without that foundation, I found it impossible to follow.
So I read The Middle East for Dummies. Really. It was great, and now I feel a lot more comfortable and find it easier to understand and learn more about day-to-day happenings.
A few years back the *Seattle Post-Intelligencer * did a whole pull-out section explaining the conflict. I’m trying to find an online version and I can’t at the moment. But here’s a little something I did pull up:
It was written about 10 years ago but is still relevent. All the main characters are examined closely an fairly. Friedman knows them all. There are no heros.
Its’ been said, “If you have been following the story for 25 years and still don’t understand it, this is the book to read.” It’s readily available in trade paperback in any good bookstore.
This ongoing conflict can’t be explained in a few words to someone who has really no idea what it is all about and how it got even started.
You can find a “timeline” and background on the BBC World website. I never came to read it, but I trust the BBC enough to recommend you to read that section in ordfer to get a first impression of a complex issue.
a library where you find books on this topic, to get insight in both the Israely and the Palestinian point of view.
There are several websites - Palestinian and Israeli - where you could get some information, but those aren’t the best place to get started since both sides shall give you only “their side”.
If this causes you to have further questions I shall come back and see if I can answer them.
Salaam. A