One of the main reasons I hardly post at all about the Middle East any more is that the situation is far too complex for me to even hope to understand. Any sort of solutions I might propose come, to be frank, from a place of almost complete ignorance. Take, for example, the case of Marwan Barghouti. He is currently in an Israeli prison and is being tried as a terrorist leader, yet at the same time it is he who negotiated the cease fire with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and it is widely believed that both the Palestinians and Israelis see him as the successor to Yasser Arafat. Furthermore, it’s understood that Israelis see him succeeding Arafat as a good thing. At this point, I’m just taking all of this stuff in and hoping for the best.