The title of my next book, which I have already started to research, and will start to write in 2025 is, ‘Understanding Conflict & Mediating Settlement.’ For further information please visit www.diplomaticlawguide.com. There is a ‘Research Bibliography’ toward the foot of the ‘Understanding Conflict & Mediating Settlement’ page. A point that I will argue in the book, is that ‘Whereas old ideas can result in war, a fresh perspective can bring about peace.’ Ilan Pape’s argument that history teaches us ‘religion’ is not a sustainable basis for ‘nationalism’, and therefore that there can never be peace in MENA until the ‘Zionist’ state of Israel transforms into a normal ‘secular’ state for both Jews & Palestinians, illustrates the point. In understanding conflict a Mediator must understand who is ‘pulling the strings’ and the ‘ideological source of their power’. These need to be brought to the surface because the underlying logic cannot be examined, understood, probed, and rigorously ‘reality-tested’ by an educated Mediator, while they remain submerged or are camouflaged. For an example in relation to Gaza, see pages 132 – 142 of ‘The Israel Lobby And US Foreign Policy’ by John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt, who discuss ‘the origins of Christian Zionism which lie in the theology of dispensationalism, an approach to biblical interpretation that emerged in nineteenth-century England … and may have made British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour more receptive to the idea of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine.’ Note that Jo-Ann Mort of ‘Americans for Peace’ describes the collaboration between American Jews & the Christian Right as an ‘unholy alliance.’ The Israeli moderate Yossie Alpher has warned that Christian support for continued settlement expansion is ‘leading us into a scenario of out-and-out disaster.’ He told CBS News – ‘God save us from these people.’ The Israeli-American scholar Gershom Gorenberg notes that ‘dispensationalist’ theology does not foresee a happy fate for Jews: in the end-times ‘the Jews die or convert. … Christian Zionists don’t love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play … [and] it’s a five act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act.’ So, who is manipulating whom? A Mediator may therefore legitemately ask the question – ‘For whom and for what are members of your armed forces dying?’ I also recommend that you read ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’ & ‘Ten Myths about Israel’, by the Jewish Professor of History, Ilan Pappe.