Earlier this week, Ha’aretz quoted a talk by Amir Peretz: “A Palestinian state has become a consensus. The slogan ‘two states for the two nations’ is also heard in Likud. But Mr. prime minister, we’ve never agreed to create two nations within our own country.” What Peretz was referring to, of course, was the growing gap between the poor and the wealthy in Israel. To which I am more inclined to say “Israel should only be so lucky” than I am to say, “Amen.”

Two nations? The rich and poor? Ah, if wealth were the only fault line. But then, of course, there are Israel’s Palestinians, and then there are, across a chasm not quite as broad, Israel’s haredim (I gather that “ultra-Orthodox” is a frowned upon appellation), and separate and quite unequal, Israel’s Bedouin. Once, it was fashionable to respond to America’s self-description as a melting pot by calling Israel a pressure cooker. Well, Israel Zangwill, whose play, The Melting Pot (1908) coined the phrase, wrote there of a cauldron, which seems to me to go a pressure cooker one (or more) better. Israel’s diverse communities, in any case, suggests no culinary metaphor I can think of. Geology is the better source – rifts, fault lines, potential earthquakes.
Read on…