From Beirut To Jerusalem - Thomas Friedman

Excerpt from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, copyright © 1954 by Grove Press Inc., renewed 1982 by Samuel Beckett.

Excerpts from the "PLAYBOY interview: Yasir Arafat," PLAYBOY magazine (September 1988), copyright © 1988 by PLAYBOY. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. Interview conducted by Morgan Strong.

For my parents, Harold and Margaret Friedman

"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"

"Well, I bet I did."

"What did he do to you?"

"Him? He never done nothing to me."

"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?"

"Why, nothing-only it's on account of the feud."

"What's a feud?"

"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?"

"Never heard of it before-tell me about it."

"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in-and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."

"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"

"Well, I should reckon}. It started thirty years ago, or som'ers along there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit-which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody would."

"What was the trouble about, Buck?-land?" "I reckon maybe-I don't know." "Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a

Shepherdson?" "Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago." "Don't anybody know?" " Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people ; but they don't know now what the row was about in the first place."

-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A Middle East Chronology

1882 As a result of the persecution of Jews in Russia and Romania a year earlier, the first large-scale immigration of Jewish settlers to Palestine takes place.

1891 Arab notables in Jerusalem send a petition to the Ottoman government in Constantinople demanding the prohibition of Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish land purchases.

1896 Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, publishes his pamphlet The Jewish State, which argues that the "Jewish Problem" can be solved only by setting up a Jewish state in Palestine, or somewhere else, so that Jews can live freely without fear of persecution. A year later, Herzl organizes the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, to promote immigration to Palestine.

1908 The first Palestinian Arabic newspapers appear: Al-Quds, in Jerusalem and Al-Asma'i in Jaffa.

1916 The Sykes-Picot Agreement is forged by Britain, France, and Russia, carving up the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in World War I. As part of the agreement, Britain wins effective control over the area of Palestine, and France over the area that is now Lebanon and Syria.

1917 The Balfour Declaration is issued by British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour, endorsing the idea of establishing a "national home" for the Jewish people in Palestine.

1920 France decrees the formation of the state of Greater Lebanon, knitting together Mt. Lebanon with the regions of Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Akkar, and the Bekaa Valley.