I was looking today at peace studies courses (TRANSCEND Peace University and Coventry University Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies) in order to consider study possibilities. The situation around here (Israel / Palestine) grows worse from day to day, and I am beginning to feel a need to gather new perspectives on the situation here. TRANSCEND has a course in peace journalism that looks interesting, for starters.
The last time I checked today, at least 46 Palestinians had been killed, while 50 rockets had been fired from Gaza to Israel. The latter don’t succeed in killing many people, but do manage to make life unbearable for those within their (widening) range. It’s a crazy situation, from which you need unusual optimism in order to imagine a resolution. Much easier to see it growing worse. So perhaps it’s just a question of vision, in which case it may be useful to try on some new glasses. There is no shortage of opticians, some of which are offering rose tinted lenses set in fashionable frames. The people of the Middle East, meanwhile, seem to be content with their myopia, their leaders satisfied with their tunnel vision.
Since the standard ways of looking at the regional conflict do not appear to be helping to reach a resolution, the challenge is to find new perspectives that fit our reality, and enable us to see it more clearly.