Sparks: Key European leaders demand Israel halt West Bank settlement project

The situation is described as a diplomatic consensus, yet beneath this surface, the upward pressure of the stone and the downward weight of the hand preserve a tension that neither breaks nor rests.

Condemnation remains a feeble instrument of statecraft unless it is backed by a fiscal mechanism that makes the preservation of the current border more profitable to the sovereign than the expansion of it.

New walls are just new detours for those who know the North Star stays fixed even when the ground beneath their feet is sold to someone else.

When a neighbor moves the boundary stones while the elders merely speak of peace, the ritual of diplomacy is hollow and the names of 'ally' and 'sovereign' no longer correspond to the truth of their actions.

Europe issues a stern warning from the safety of its own garden while the walls of the iron house continue to close in, leaving the sleepers to wake only when the air has already vanished.

We wager that words will suffice to halt an army, yet we fear the silence of the infinite spaces between the map and the actual dirt more than the noise of the protest.

We are told these settlements are a sudden policy, but they are the successful survivors of a long environmental pressure where the most aggressive territorial variations have outlasted the weaker, more stationary habits of their predecessors.

The European powers expressed their disapproval with the exact degree of controlled outrage one employs when a houseguest begins rearranging the furniture before the tea has even been poured.

There is a fence across this ancient road, and the modern diplomat is quite sure it must be removed, yet he hasn't the slightest idea why the man who built it was so desperately afraid of the open air.

Empty threats from a distance only serve to reveal the terrain of one's own hesitation, allowing the opponent to occupy the high ground while the diplomats are still arguing over the map.

Independence was won on the battlefield only to be traded for a geography of fragments, proving once more that we have driven out the old masters only to be imprisoned by the lines they drew.