I was with my mom outside her house in suburban Minnetonka on a porch overlooking a water feature, a small formation of rocks that made up a miniature waterfall. We sat there on metal lawn chairs, listened to the water pour over the flat stones and looked out at the preternatural greenness of the golf course. My mom remarked on the old-growth oaks that broke the monotony of the grass. She is 93, still quite beautiful and very astute. The two of us picked up a conversation we’d begun earlier.

I had just read her an essay I’d written about Israel. These days I’ve been writing a great deal about the place and the people, about the way Israel is spoken of, and the way Jews are being looked at. When I finished reading, she looked at me with an intensity she hadn’t had until then.

“Where is this going to end?” she asked. “The fighting and the back and forth. Where does it end? You don’t mention any solution.”

She was right. I hadn’t mentioned one.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think anybody knows.”

There is no grand solution sitting somewhere waiting for the right politician to discover it. I don’t think this ends because of a committee, a new UN resolution. I don’t think it ends with a new prime minister or another proposal drafted and redrafted. I have, unfortunately, come to think of this as an intractable problem. I used the word intractable, and I thought I saw my mom wince.

“Well, how is it going to end?” she asked again.

“How do you think it’s going to........

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