Lessons for a new Israel-Palestine?

Apropo the previous post, there are precedents for fully administering contested areas via multilateral UN institutions. The crucial precedent that hasn’t yet been broken is establishing a permanent UN arbiter in a contested zone.
For inspiration to be drawn and, perhaps more importantly, lessons to be learned, see East Timor.

Outside the nation-state tinderbox

Here’s a copy of ‘How about, let’s stop deifying the nation-state‘ … Phil Weiss’ post of my own answer to his question: how to offer readers a forward-looking solution in Israel-Palestine…
Life in fortress-Israel can be a comfortable buffer to reality. But reality has an awkward habit of crashing the party. Reports from places like Gaza [...]

An Islamic History of Europe?

Why does history matter? It’s the sole provider of context, of meaning, to the otherwise unfathomably complex temporal world. The narratives that sit in your head are the prisms through which you view the world. Successful demagogues know this–so do (good) novelists and filmmakers.
I’ve made this point before, but i feel it’s worth making again: [...]

BBC 4: Science and Islam

As both a child of the globalized era, and someone involved in education, i’m continually irked by the myopic (judeo)-christian-centred narratives on the history of global ‘progress’ presented to students here in the west (and probably elsewhere, although i can’t speak to that).
Here’s a doc by BBC 4 that tries to remedy this. It’s not [...]