Connect to share and comment  Splitting the differences
Opinion: The dilemma Northern Ireland shares with Palestine,
Kosovo and other divided societies.  A Palestinian man stands
near the controversial Israeli barrier in al-Ram in the West
Bank on the outskirts of Jerusalem March 11, 2009. (Yannis
Behrakis/Reuters)  BOSTON — The murder of two British soldiers
and a policeman in Antrim and Armagh, after more than a decade
of peace in Northern Ireland, sent a chill down the spines of
Ireland and Great Britain. The Good Friday agreement, signed 11
years ago, was supposed to end “The Troubles,” as those lost
years of violence were called.  Former U.S. Sen. George
Mitchell, who put so much time into negotiating the Good Friday
agreement, is now embarked on trying to settle an even more
intractable and violent problem, the Israeli-Palestinian
dispute. He will use some of the skills he honed in bringing the
Irish together.  Although no two such disputes are the same,
there are similarities. The most difficult to re