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I had a dream last night and I remember it which is quite unusual for me, I was informed by my leader, whether Premier or Prime Minister, that he’d selected me on his cabinet team, in some minor portfolio, and I was extremely nervous as well as surprised. I talked to my family, particularly my sister, and she reassured me and took it in her stride, and my confidence began to grow, I was excited and honoured at the trust and faith people had in me, I would have to get stuck into research in the portfolio area assigned to me, if only I could remember what it was. Apart from that little to report, still tied to the house. Reading John Quiggin’s blogsite, he posts something on Sharon and the Palestinians, the two state solution, and so many people crawl out of the woodwork so to speak to comment, expert pro-Israelis, expert less-than-pro-Israelis, expert pro-Palestinians, all expert, apparently, on the 67 borders and the 48 borders, and the Barak-Clinton peace plan and the Oslo accord, all deeply disagreeing and insulting each other and taking umbrage, and passionately committed to the right thing, the solution, the best of all possible worlds, and these are Australians, across the other side of the world from the conflict with nothing detectably Jewish or Arabic in their names and no evident religious baggage, it gives a little insight into the impossibilities it seems of finding a settlement everyone can live with. I’m surprised I find myself with so little to say about the matter, accept to point out logical errors and inconsistencies in particular arguments, the abuse of the term moral equivalence and so forth, but an interesting subject this since Yasser Arafat has been taken poorly, he’s the one who so many Israelis and pro-Israelis have for so long wanted out of the frame, and I must say he doesn’t sound like my kind of guy, but neither does Sharon or Nehenyatu, and is it really fair to blame the Palestinians entirely for their impoverished predicament because many of them are in favour of suicide bombing and see the road to happiness and success in recovering some if not all of Israel for themselves, as a greater priority than building schools and the institutions of democracy and capitalism that are expected of them from we comfy westerners who see all the middle east apart from Israel as backward and ignorant and tribal and intransigently indigent? So what if Arafat dies, who will replace him, will there be elections, was the election of Arafat truly democratic, is the election of anyone truly democratic, a matter of relative flaws, closeness to an unattainable ideal, which election in the history of humanity has been closest to this ideal I wonder? The question is whether someone who is moderate enough to negotiate with the Israelis will be acceptable to the bulk of the Palestinians, and whether anyone acceptable to the Paestinians will be able to talk to the Israelis, to give up the rhetoric or hope of the destruction of the Israeli state.