If we're talking about Sinai, we can't understand it without the 1967 and 1973 wars, and you can't understand it without the biblical story of Moses leading his people through the wilderness. These are essential elements in the modern conversation about what's going on in the Middle East that seem to have been lost.

I feel like a 1960s graduate student. I still work on note cards. I've never found a better system.

Look at what Jimmy Carter did. Look at the risks he took for a country that wasn't his. Israel has benefited unbelievably from that. To fail to give him credit seems unfair.

Chronology can be dangerous. You can get so linear that it becomes robotic for the reader.

To me the notion that Palestinians are actually Jews is, I think, quite revelatory and very radical and a possible bridge that has been ignored, I think, in this entire controversy and there's ample evidence to support it.

It's the hardening of these narratives that makes peace so difficult. If each side can see the narrative, the claims that the other has, then there is a much more likely possibility of making a resolution. But what I see is the opposite. There is a total disclaiming of the validity of the other side, and talk that I find really unsettling, the kind of chatter you get from ultra-right Israelis and Hamas is of annihilation. In that kind of dialogue, there's no way to move toward peace.

When I'm writing about complicated subjects, it usually involves a world. It could be the world of Scientology or the world of Al Qaeda, or the world of counter-terrorism.I look for emblematic beasts of burden - what I call "donkeys" - who can carry the reader through this world. They serve a different purpose. Donkeys are not especially interesting or likeable, but they are serviceable. They will take you into this world. The distinction I'm trying to make is: It's not about them. It's about the world.