If I were Bush, I'd head to the Middle East, find all the leaders including Sharon and Abbas and other prime figures and say:

Bush: Abbas, you have home territory, do you wish heads or tails

Abbas: Tails

Bush: The toss is tails. Abbas, do you want the north or the south?

Abbas: We'll take south.

Bush: Abbas takes south, Sharon will have north. The Dome of the Rock will be neutral area, shared by all, trading off every other day if necessary. Please don't make it necessary.

Bush: Great, now that I've got everyones attention...

On July 4th -- for purely sentimental reasons, of course -- everyone will move to their respective sides. On July 14th, ten days later, everyone should be on the correct side. The divison line we've created to parse north from south will be the new border. Simple enough, really. Trade, should you wish to do so, will take place across the border just like any other two countries, and will be regulated as each country sees fit. We like free markets.

Now nobody panic. We'll provide transportation to anyone who asks for it, you don't even have to prove you can't afford it. If the deadline needs to be moved forward a few days for unforseen reasons, so be it.

Everyone will be assigned a plot of land. I'm sorry you don't like it but tough shit. You haven't been able to figure this out for the last fifty five years and now you have nukes. Funtime is fucking over.

There are about 3.6 million of you above the age of eighteen. All of you will will be provided with a thousand dollars to assist with the relocation. Yes it'll cost 3.6 billion dollars but that's about 1.2% what we give the Pentagon every year. Tell them to eat mac and cheese. And no death ray projects for 2006. They'll get over it.

Israel, we'd like our nukes back. No this isn't a request. Either you give them back or you can keep them and you're on your own.

That's what I thought.

I remember becoming acutely aware that the world was significantly larger than my neighborhood around five or six. I remember at some point in my childhood staring transfixed at by angry people with strange beards and covered heads speaking forcefully. I remember hearing about the Beirut bombing and evactuation and I really didn't know what it meant.

I remember knowing what explosives were (I was a six year old male) but not why someone would kill hundreds of people with them. That's the earliest I think I can trace my sense of mortality.

Newscasts about violent events around the world still strike me as a little surreal because it would never even occur to me to be afraid of a bomb going off as I sit in a restaurant. Or to be afraid of tanks rolling down my street with guns pointed at me.

If these people are nothing but abstractions to me, and I consider myself at least politically aware (if completely useless), then what about the people who bury themselves in whatever it is normal people bury themselves in?

So every few years, same goddamn routine. Doesn't anyone ever catch on?

And I've never heard of a valid reason for the peace process to end. I've seen lots of goddamn reason for it to speed up, though!

It's almost like the powers that be don't really want it to end...

I'm fightin' fire with fire, I'm fightin' fire with fire, I'm fightin' fire with fire ...wha? Fuckit. I'm fighting fire ...with water. - Def Poetry poet whose name I don't remember.