Lately, from inside my little sandbox view of the universe, I’ve been thinking that left or right might not matter so much in the Israeli context. The Zionist left had its chances to make peace and failed, miserably. They didn’t even manage to to make Palestinian Israelis feel at home. The anti-Zionist left only managed to scare people. But the Israeli right are doing a wonderful job of winning more and more votes while competing with one another over who can be more nationalistic. Their greedy vision of one big Emmental Jewish nation with smaller and smaller air holes for anyone else to breathe will surely win. But when we peel away the covering, the cheese inside will turn out to be one solid, pungent blue-veined Gorgonzola, rather than the mild tasting product they were hoping for.

There will be a lot of thwarted expectations and pain, but in the end, Jews and Palestinians will get the nation they didn’t know they wanted, and learn to live in it together. Whether right-wing or left-wing politicians offer the shortest route to that inevitable point, it’s becoming harder and harder to decide.