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Make Peace in the Middle East from Your Own Keyboard

The media that puts you in control.

With finals fast approaching, most of us hardly make it through the day without gulping down a large double-double from Tim Horton’s, let alone find the time to read!

Luckily, I had a few minutes this week to start reading a book that’s been waiting patiently on my nightstand since New Year’s: How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less Without Leaving Your Apartment by Gregory Levey.

The book takes a hilarious look at American policy-making around the Israel-Palestine conflict. You wouldn’t immediately consider that funny subject matter, but Levey actually does a great job of keeping his discussion light and level-headed.

If you’re interested, head to the library and check it out – it’s full of interesting stuff. In one chapter, Levey even tries his hand at the Middle East diplomacy videogame!

That’s right: because decade’s worth of world leaders and political activists haven’t had much luck at the real deal, you too can now try to make peace, all from the comfort of your own PC or Mac!

The game he tried is called PeaceMaker, and it was designed a few years back to simulate the Middle East situation. You can play from the perspective of the Palestinian President or the Israeli PM, deciding where to send troops, whether to build settlements, how to manage the police, whether to release prisoners or essentially any other governmental action.

You can make speeches to your citizens, run polls and you even have advisors to consult along the way. Your ultimate goal is to create peace – what the game assumes is a two-state solution – while also keeping your own people happy.

The full version of PeaceMaker comes at a price, but even playing around with the free demo version is pretty sweet. Even if the game doesn’t actually result in the creation of real peace, it’s a cool example of media being used to explore the different sides of a polarized conflict.

And hey – it’s always worth a try, right?