One can only hope that mature adults are the ones seeking to end the conflict?
Were we to see myopically focused juveniles like EJ or DG at the negotiating table, peace could be shelved for a million or more years, and millions more women and children, would be asked to pay the ultimate price.
EJ and DG, it's not a football game boys, where one side eventually wins, or scores more goals!
Nobody wins!
And even winning always is accompanied by a price!
Sure, the Israelis have superior weaponry for now!
Suppose they used their current superiority, to simply roll-over and eliminate all opposition?
Would that then bring the longed for final peace; or just a whole host, of new and vastly better armed enemies!?
And make no mistake, modern nuclear weapons are indeed an viable option; even for Israel, albeit, they simply don't and can't discriminate between combatant and unarmed civilians!
Let the "GAME" and the old as time, blood-letting eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, revenge and reprisals continue, until a nuclear armed Iran invites itself into the conflict, and finishes it, with a couple of nukes dropped on Israel?
Will that end the conflict, or simply and finally give the west, a justifiable reason to enter the conflict and wipe out all opposition, with their own nuclear arsenal?
And who would really care if all the the highly volatile Middle East was turned into a sea of vitrified glass; and, free oil for the victors?
Not the Russians or the Chinese, who as pragmatists, would prefer to share in the spoils, rather than the fate of the eternally conflicted, Middle East?
Ask any of the survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, if they had any stomach for any future conflict, after the bomb?
To be sure, there are weapons that could destroy the entire Middle East;or indeed, whole world!
And believe me, I know that there are some very powerful people, willing to use them, rather than be enslaved by, or live under the yoke of "Islamic" fanaticism!?
Rhrosty.

Promprete wrote that 98% of Arafat's list has been agreed to by Israel.

Did that list include fixed and fair borders?
Rights for Palestininans who live in Israel?
Security from threats of overwhelming military invasion at the whim of Palestine's neighbour?
Rights to trade and to control their borders?
Cessation of civilian encroachment onto Palestinian lands?
Guaranteed access cross the border for farmers to tend their crops and herds and for employees top get to work?

That's more than half a dozen contenders which are clearly on the "not agreed 2%" list, for starters.

I very much doubt that Arafat's list included a further 300 issues, all of which have been agreed and adhered to by Israel. Besides which, Arafat has left the negotiating table, has he not? Why bring his name into this now?

Pomprete's numeracy and his his idea of what constitutes fair and reasonable compromise are open to question. Compromise still involves both sides hurting the same amount. 100-to-1 death tolls are not evidence of compromise. I suggest that, until that ratio has been reduced to unity, there is still work to be done.

"Were we to see myopically focused juveniles like EJ or DG at the negotiating table, peace could be shelved for a million or more years," says Rhrosty.

Rhrosty, I occasionally read your ponderous, pontificating, almost unintelligible comments but, until I read the above insult, I never had the inclination to respond to you. I will this one time.

As I've indicated elsewhere, when insults are used then we know that the people who use them haven't got the intellect or maturity to debate the issues but have to depend on infantile name-calling as well as recycling the mind-deadening, divisive propaganda they have been taught from birth.

I will continue to push my anti-war, pro-peace barrow and keep hoping that warmongers like you become extinct before nuclear war begins, one that will be started by the U.S. and/or Israel.

I've been trying to figure out just what Rhosty is looking for, and danged if I can.

Not justice - e.g. a state in which people have equal democratic rights and what is stolen is restored. Strike that one, implies Rhosty. A juvenile football game apparently.

Not an end to racist injustice as in South Africa? Nup, doesn't qualify - Jews are more "special" than Boers, and MUCH more "special" than Arabs.

Not a nuclear war? Hell no - and no end to nuclear blackmail either: pursue justice and we'll blow the place to hell. The ultimate suicide bombers.

No, Rhosty seems to be after “compromise”. As between the robber and the robbed.

We've seen endless compromise - the Zionists grab, the Palestinians yield. Peace processes, Oslo deals etc. tolerating a racist, expansionist state, leaving five million exiles banged up in refugee camps and shrinking Bantustans.

The most powerful weapon the Zionists have is world public acceptance in the wake of the Holocaust of mass murders by Europeans, not Palestinians. And thankfully the world is awakening to the disconnect. (Compare now with the 1950s when few actually knew what Israel really was.) Israel will progressively lose acceptance as its very legitimacy is challenged, by relentlessly confronting lies with truth, arrogance with justice. The basic truth that Zionists can’t take is that NO ethnic group is more “special” than the rest of us.

Added to loss of public acceptance is loss of viability as the “population bomb” continues to build and American dependence on the Middle East oil declines. As I wrote above, the Zionists have two choices – a soft landing and a hard landing. It’s their choice. And ours.

It is not often I find myself agreeing with Mr Singer but on the basic premise that the 'Gaza conflict (is) sure to resume' the only rational response is 'Of Course!'.

The question is how soon and the answer lies in looking to who has gained politically and who has lost because of the most recent hostilities.

I think sooner rather than later.

Many commentators and politicians within Israel have condemned Netanyahu for conducting the killings with Gaza with one eye firmly on the ballot box. It was the case with operation Cast Lead before the previous election and the trend has continued. I think their opinion has strong validity therefore we need to ask has Netanyahu got what he wanted? Unfortunately for him and the Palestinians the answer is no.

Having called an early election in October a confrontation with Hamas was always front and centre of the playbook but his electoral fortunes have waned and the effort so far looks like costing Likud a number of seats, some of them instead going to the defence minister Barak who has seen his stocks rise.

“Maariv newspaper's survey said the newly-merged party of Mr Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, Likud Beitenu, would take 37 of the 120 parliamentary seats up for grabs on January 22.
A poll before the conflict suggested they would win 43. The two factions presently hold 42 seats combined.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-23/gunfire-kills-palestinian-on-gaza-border/4389872

Recent polls show less than a third of Israeli's supported the ceasefire and nearly half opposed it. These figures will be hard to ignore.

Facts on the ground seem to show the 'niggle' has started already. Two days into the ceasefire and the Israelis have opened fire on Palestinians on the Gaza border wounding 9 and killing one. If this had happened to Israeli soldiers there would have been a far more dramatic response. One can only applaud Hamas in this instant for not rising to the bait.

The only realistic scenario is that these provocations will continue to escalate from Israel until the truce is broken.

I would love to be proven wrong.

Dear Julian,

<<Palestine - a secular, democratic, non-racist Palestine stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan>>

What self-respecting Muslim would ever agree to that?!