Scholar David Hulme Launches Blog on the Middle East Conflict
Palestinian-Israeli Dispute in Half of AP's top ten Stories of 2006
Pasadena, CA (PRWEB) February 21, 2007 -- With 2007 well under way, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to dominate the front pages of worldwide news. Last year, the Middle East conflict was the topic of more than half of the top ten stories featured on the Associated Press (AP). This year, the promise of peace talks has heightened awareness, and scholars like David Hulme are using Internet blogs to educate the interested and less informed on how identity, ideology and moral issues in society have an affect on the Middle East conflicts.
A February 14 Reuters news story reported that Azzam al-Ahmad, a top aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that Fatah's unity government deal with Hamas Islamists met all the demands of the Quartet of mediating powers and should be accepted. The Quartet, comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, has called on the Palestinian government to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept interim peace deals.
In an interview about the Middle East conflict with Voice of America, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), said, "Terrorism and Muslim extremism will only cease after a just and lasting solution is found to the troubled countries of the Middle East, particularly in Palestine."
On February 6 MSNBC reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Feb. 19 in a renewed bid to revive stalled peace talks. In January Rice pledged deeper U.S. engagement in trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Olmert also said he was ready to negotiate with any Palestinian government, including one with Hamas, as long as it met Western demands to recognize the Jewish state.
In December 2006 author and Middle East scholar David Hulme launched his blog exploring how identity, ideology and other moral issues in society fuel the Middle East conflict. His research includes what leading Israelis and Palestinians have said about the possible reasons for lack of progress on the Jerusalem Question
"At the heart of the region's impasse is the "City of Peace." Early in the last century, David Lloyd George termed Jerusalem "the most famous city in the world"--a place that is presently shared by more than 600,000 indigenous inhabitants, three dominant faiths, and the world community--a unique place whose hard-won peace would reverberate for the good of all. Yet peace does not come to the city of peace," said Hulme.
Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is considered one of the leading Palestinian figures devoted to the search for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - and according to this recent Reuters article hopes for a government of unity that is based on principles that the international community can accept.
Hulme's Vision.org Foundation will contribute a portion of the proceeds from the sale of his book, Identity, Ideology, and the Future of Jerusalem, to intercommunal peace efforts in Israel and Palestine.
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