Stuck in the Middle (East)

I don’t know what it is about the Middle East, but I cling to every bit of information I can learn about the people, culture and history of the area. While my US History courses could hold my attention for about a minute, I voluntarily spend hours reading actual history books about countries I can’t even pronounce. I know someday I will go there, I imagine spending months traveling around, living with families and really learning the culture, but in the meantime I amuse myself by learning as much about it as I can.

A few days ago my Israeli penpal and I reignited our email correspondence. I was hooked up with Dekel through my friend from Syracuse, also from Israel, and we have been exchanging stories since the beginning of the year. With my graduating and his world travels we both got caught up in our own lives, but when I caught him on g-chat I put an end to that. Dekel just finished his mandatory 3-year army stint and will be starting college this year. That still blows my mind every time I think about it – everyone being mandated to be in the army. I imagine it is not so unheard of globally, but in my mind being able to serve in the army requires certain personality traits that I know I don’t have. To think that if I had been born in Israel or someplace else, I would probably just be getting out now too! Anyway, in his last email Dekel mentioned that he had been involved in the Israeli election. I had a very topical awareness that an election had happened and I knew there was some drama involved. With Dekel mentioning that things didn’t turn out for his party I decided to look into it.

Did you know that in Israel, after the general election the PM has a certain amount of time to then form a coalition government with the other parties who can refuse to join! After being appointed, Netanyahu had to pretty much broker with the other party leaders to create a united national government. I’m not really sure how the whole opposition thing works because apparently the opposition leaders still meet with the PM. When I first read about it I imagined a much more war-like situation, but I'm glad to learn otherwise. I am waiting to hear back from Dekel to get a real-person explanation of the system and will keep you posted on what I learn.