Well, Art and I are sitting at the airport with a little time to blog since the plane is delayed.  I can’t believe that we are already on the way home.  As Art has blogged already (and we will blog more about different speakers), this trip has been so very full.  We are returning home in defeat having not successfully solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  And now our flight is delayed over an hour – who knows when we’re headed out of here.  Oh, the agony of defeat.

Seriously, I think I am ending the week where we started–it’s complicated.   Our very last academic visit (before yet another fabulous meal–we will all need to drop 5-10 pounds–if a meal is part of every negotiation session here in the Middle East, count us in!) was a tour of Jaffa co- led by an Israeli Jew and Israeli Arab.  It was a great example of what we teach–partisan perceptions, ladder of inference, narrative, etc.  Each group has a story to tell about the history–where Arabs used to live, why they left, how Jews arrived, the development of the city now, and so forth.  It is one thing to read this in a book or law review article–and we have–but it is really wonderful to walk through the city and have each of these guides from their own perspectives tell us about historical events and the impact on this beautiful city.  In some ways, it’s depressing.  We are here in the beautiful city on the Mediterranean in 75 degree weather watching the sunset and yet having an Arab kid riding in the back seat of the car pretend shoot at us with his fingers.  On the other hand, our guides were both hopeful about peace in the long term and not even particularly wed to a solution–one state, two-state, whatever would work.  When asked why people were so optimistic about peace, one of them said there were only 5 optimists and we must have met them all.  My sense is that many here realize the current situation is untenable, so it must be resolved sometime, but who knows when.

Hey, the plane is starting to load.  Woo-hoo!!  All it takes is optimism, eh?