The Middle East’s fractured lands - Complex and chaotic, not impossible

IT’S safe to suggest that this weekend, somewhere not too far away, some golf club sage tried, at a lively dinner party, to hide their insecurity on one subject or another by suggesting they didn’t read the papers because they know that “the Israelis and the Palestinians are still fighting and I don’t need to find out about this week’s atrocity”. 

Indeed they are, and, tragically, likely to continue to do so for some time yet. More atrocities can be expected.

However, had our cornered diner the inclination — or the interest needed to sustain democracy — he might discover that much of the Middle East seems either a battlefield or a refuge, a source of funding for terrorists.