Israeli Reactions to Peace in the Middle East

It was once observed that if there is anything to be learned from history it is that men never learn from history. If the events in the Middle East are any measure, the statement is only half right. That men should rarely learn from their past is a function of the fact that they are not wholly rational beings. Not independent analytical mechanisms, they are, to one extent or another, dependent on cultural patterns of perception and conditioned manners of behaviour. Yet, they are also partially rational and thus on occasion they can look back, take the hint, as it were, from past debacles and break boldly, if briefly, from their culture-bound conditions.

Lawrence Davidson is a free lance writer living in Washington, DC.