Allister Sparks: Where no land has gone before

[Classical_Liberal]

..FOR their part, the African nationalists, led by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, rejected that notion and claimed their right to be full citizens of South Africa, which they felt should be ruled by the majority - that is, themselves.

Where else do you find such a struggle over rival claims to the same piece of territory? Not in the US, but between Israelis and Palestinians, between the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland, the Greeks and Turks of Cyprus, the Tamils and Sinhalese of Sri Lanka. And how are they doing? Pretty poorly. This is a particularly intractable form of conflict and South Africa alone has cracked it.

To appreciate the full scale of South Africa's achievement, one should consider what the equivalent of its solution would be if applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not the two-state solution of the Oslo agreements or the so-called road map, for those are segregationist, apartheid, solutions; the same is true of divided Cyprus and the ethnically segregated former Yugoslavia.

No, a South African solution in the Middle East would see Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank consolidated into one country ruled by an elected majority - which soon would be a Palestinian majority government, with the Jewish people living in this enlarged state as a minority group, albeit an economically dominant one......

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9397571%5E7583,00.html

[On the Road]

1. Sure Puts Things in Perspective, Doesn't It?

It's not as if there were no history of bloodshed between the races, either.

[Muddleoftheroad]

2. Israel IS ruled by its majority

Overwhelmingly so.