This issue of the New Statesman is devoted to the Palestinian question. It is not prompted by any recent outrage on either side, but by an ambition to provide context and understanding on a subject where passions tend to obscure facts. An interval of relative quiet in the conflict is a good moment to take the longer view. None of the world's quarrels is more in need of context. The warring sides in the former Yugoslavia look back eight centuries, those in Northern Ireland a mere four. The competing claims in the Middle East draw on events going back two millennia or more.

Even the most basic terminology is explosive. "Palestine", which some may think a mere geographical reference, is itself a loaded word, just as "Ulster" is in the Irish conflict. The truth about quite recent events - from the flight of Arabs in 1948 to the Israeli incursion into Jenin last year - become matters of irreconcilable dispute. History piles upon history, providing new layers of grievance and resentment. It is easy for outsiders - particularly the mainland British, who have no personal experience of disputed territory - to take a patronising view, regarding everybody involved as fanatics beyond reason and comprehension, and concluding that there should be a plague (most appropriately of locusts) on both houses. But think then of the weirdly contrived grievances, many of them dating back decades, that drive violence between gangs of football followers here - or of how often middle-class householders come to blows and prolonged litigation over boundary disputes. The Palestinian-Israeli quarrel is at bottom a very human one, writ large and sealed in years of blood.

Four things make it specially intractable, and specially dangerous. First, the clash is not just between competing nationalisms but also between competing faiths. This is also true in Northern Ireland, in former Yugoslavia, and in the Indian subcontinent, for example. But Palestine is embedded in the sacred texts, mythologies and aspirations of the three leading monotheistic religions. The result is that millions who are not directly involved feel they have a stake in the conflict.

Second, Palestine is, in effect, the boundary between what are contentiously known as the first and third worlds. This brings more baggage, galvanising many who are unmoved by religion, even in its broad cultural sense. The democratic forms of Israel (Arabs can vote in Israel proper, the press is free and there is a genuinely independent legal system) are contrasted with, at best, the autocratic rule of Arab states. Israel's market-driven consumerism (once a brand leader for social democracy, the country is now dedicated to capitalism, minimal welfare and deregulation on the US model) is contrasted with more traditional Arab societies. The extreme poverty in the slums of Gaza and the West Bank refugee camps is contrasted with the affluence of parts of Israel. The occupation of Palestinian territory echoes colonial rule. All these things sharpen mutual suspicions and encourage outsiders to hook their own political agendas on to the conflict.

Third, Jews and Palestinians have suffered the pain of exile. Though most Jews are now citizens of other countries, they know as a people what it means to have nowhere they can call home, to exist as permanent outsiders. As minorities in countries across the world, both groups have an acute sense of themselves as potential victims of persecution. This is why, to many, they seem unreasonably sensitive to criticism, branding even quite mild comment as either anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. Tragically, as divisions over Palestine become more bitter and spread across international borders, the two groups feel even more threatened and even more convinced of the necessity of a national homeland. Finally, and most obviously, the quarrel straddles a region of enormous strategic importance. This was true long before the discovery of oil. Now, though Palestine itself has no oil reserves of any significance, the fate of the Middle East largely determines the fate of the world's economy.

Since the purpose of this issue is to set out the facts - though our writers expect to be challenged from both sides - this is not the place to advocate detailed solutions. Only one observation is worth making. Characterise this dispute as you like - an anti-colonialist struggle, part of a battle for the wider survival of the west, the prelude to Rapture as predicted in the Bible, and so on - it will end only when Jews and Arabs wish to make peace, and are free to do so. They perhaps have reason enough to hate one another. The best contribution the rest of us can make, whatever our sympathies, is to refrain from flinging ourselves into the trenches, to cool our emotions and to hear the saner and calmer voices on both sides.

No slapping, please, we're British

There is nothing so ridiculous, as Macaulay might have said, as the British in one of their periodic agonies about whether to slap their children. Only they could think of allowing assault, but not bodily harm (thus ensuring court cases that turn on evidence about marks on bottoms), as the Lords amendment to the Children Bill does. What nobody has noticed is that bans on parental smacking (as opposed to school caning) are mainly confined to northern Europe: Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and so on. Latin countries don't bother. (Italy's alleged ban is an un-codified supreme court decision.) Why is this? Could it be that Latin societies are more comfortable with physical expression of all kinds, affectionate as well as angry? British children rarely get physical contact with their parents and so are traumatised by the mildest slap. It follows that, in these chilly northern climes, there is no alternative to a total ban.

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