Dema

There is no single cause to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and there is no easy solution. This conflict exists within the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, which in turn is part of the fourteen hundred year struggle between Islam and the other cultures and religions of the world. This is a clash over land and resources, people and cultures. It is a struggle of modernity versus the conservation of tribal values. 

The conflict did not begin in 1947 at the rebirth of the nation of Israel, nor in 1967, when Gaza, the Sinai Penninsula, and what was then called the West Bank of the Jordan. It started with the Ottoman conquest of this region and its gradual decline. It started with the Mongol Empire sweeping from the far East, destroying empires as it moved west, only to melt into the many people it conquered. It started with the expansion of the Arabian people energized with their new religion Islam, which they spread across the two weakened empires of the day, the Byzantines and the Persians, who had exhausted themselves from centuries of warfare. 



The conflict, the struggle, is about culture, a dynamic modern culture facing a primitive traditional one, It is a conflict over education, family life, and the role of women. It is a conflict of economics, with the introduction of collectivism versus the rights of the individual; of theories of nationalism where those favoring nation-states collide with those yearning for a return to the age of empires. 

With so many layers and folds, there is the desire to find simple explanations and force equally simple solutions. But simple without understanding is harmful. Rather it takes simple, with the understanding of the cultures and history involved, with the desire to find the truth and to hold all parties accountable, only then can the region, the world, find true and lasting peace.

This book tells the story of a young Arab Muslim woman who wants to put the past behind her and the Arab people, to find mutually-beneficial solutions with their Jewish neighbors, and to use the strength of all the peoples in the Middle East to create a society that will not only co-exist but will become the envy of the world. 

This is her dream. If enough people join her in this new hope, then a dream it will not have to remain.