Graded IR Class

At the same time, the war on drugs has fallen short of its key economic goal: to make drugs more expensive, and therefore make them less accessible to drug users.

Michael Botticelli, acting director of ONDCP, wrote, "This Strategy … rejects the notion that we can arrest and incarcerate our way out of the nation's drug problem."

The idea is to cut down the supply, so drugs are more expensive and, therefore, less affordable and accessible for a drug user.

On the surface at least, it's very simple: the conflict is over who gets what land and how it is controlled. In execution, though, that gets into a lot of really thorny issues, like: Where are the borders? Can Palestinian refugees return to their former homes in present-day Israel?

Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has turned Gaza into what human rights organizations sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the unemployment rate up to 40 percent.

Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank.

The Palestinians are divided between the secular Fatah movement which controls the West Bank, and the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Growing Israeli disillusionment over the prospects for a peace agreement with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world promises more Jewish settlements on occupied territories and constant confrontation with Hamas.

Regional instability threatens to disrupt the relatively favorable geopolitical balance Israel has enjoyed in recent years. Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries that recognize the State of Israel, and Israel’s long-time ally in Egypt, former president Hosni Mubarak, has already been swept away and replaced with an Islamist government.