the green line

just finished a good national geographic article on bethlehem. it's from the december 2007 issue, what can i say, i'm behind on my magazine stack. well, this is reading for pleasure, that's why.

ng is one of my favorite reg mags, because it doesn't try to get all political. you have to realize how impossible it is to read any news or political analysis when you know that any time an author's right about what's going on, it's completely by accident. so ng is a nice escape: fossils, slice of culture somewhere, some exotic animal, etc.

so this issue's slice of culture somewhere is bethlehem 2007 a.d., right in the middle of the israeli-palestinian conflict. now, of all the conflicts in all the world, this one is indeed special. it is the only one that is totally uncontrolled, unstaged.

all the others, literally without exception, are carefully orchestrated by us to accomplish certain objectives, or to maintain certain stases. from india/pakistan to the "georgia crisis", they're all planned out. and you wouldn't believe how rarely they stray from plan, or how quickly they're put back on if they do.

but not israel. that whole damm place is wild and on its own. it has been since 1949. things were sliding into chaos after 1948 -- real chaos, not our usual faux chaos -- but the councilors couldn't agree on what to do. oddly enough, there were partisans for both sides, which never happens. i don't know why, though i know it wasn't any of that religious claptrap that fuels the conflict on the ground.

so during one particularly absinthe-fueled night, after weeks of interminable meetings, the idea was floated: what if we really let them go? au naturel, uninterfered-with, and see what happens? amazingly, the councilors were all so sure their side would quickly prevail that they agreed. and the knowledge to be gained from such an experiment was another benefit, they decided.

that's what the green line is really named for, the absinthe. the ink-color story was cooked up for the media, for obvious reasons.

the rest, as they say, is history. nothing's stabilized, and it doesn't look like anything ever will be. there were, and still are, interesting observations coming out of research about it. but frankly the cost and work of managing everything else surrounding this thing is beyond immense.

"This is not just land," says Froman, his long white beard spilling from his chin, unruly as a river rapid. "This is the Holy Land. There's no oil, no gold, no diamonds. It's a desert! But this is God's palace." Froman is 62 years old; he can count back 17 generations of rabbis in his family. He's the 18th. His son is also a rabbi.

guess what dude. it is in fact just land. and you're right, it's not even good land. hang it up already, you crazy bastards.