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 of the world. This is a clash over land and resources, people and cultures, modernity versus the conservation of values.

The conflict predates the rebirth of Israel in 1948. It started before the Ottoman conquest. It began earlier than the Mongols surge from the East, destroying empires, only to melt into the same people it conquered. It preceded the expansion of the Arabian people energized by their new religion, Islam, which they used to topple the two weakened empires of the day, the Byzantines and the Persians, who had exhausted themselves from centuries of warfare.

This is a struggle as much over culture than anything else: modernity confronting tradition with the inevitable clash over education, family life, and the role of women. Then there is the tangle between economic systems, with collectivism competing with the rights of the individual. Then there are theories of nationalism, one side favoring nation-states, another yearning for the return of empires, and another not wanting any lines drawn at all.

With so many layers and folds, there is the desire to impose simple solutions. But simple without understanding plants the seeds of further conflict. It takes simple, but only after understanding the cultures and history involved, with the desire to find and speak the truth. Only then can the region, and hence the world, find true and lasting peace.

This book tells the story of a young Arab Muslim woman who seeks the truth, who desires to move beyond the past to find mutually-beneficial solutions with her neighbors and to use the combined strength of all the people in the region to forge a society that not only co-exists but will become the envy of the world.

This is her dream. Join her in this New Hope, so a dream it will not have to remain.