Dear Shadow Minister,

I agree with you. However, neither side will abandon ridiculous preconditions so the conflict will continue.

Dear SM,

It all depends what you include in "Zionism": the desire of the Jewish people to live in and control the land of Israel, is about 3500 years old.

Most of the Old-Testament was collected at the time of Ezra, the scribe (480–440 BCE), who also fathered the Jewish nation as we recognise it today. Being the tough and cruel administrator that he was, I doubt he was interested in anything spiritual: he used whatever materials he could to bring the nation together, so having incidentally found old scrolls with that character called G-d in them, he made use of it for his political ends.

In a twist, later on some Jews, notably the Christian, Kabbalistic and Hasidic movements, managed to somehow distil religion out of their Jewish framework, despite it having originally much to do with politics and little to do with the spirit (Ezra would have considered the former as traitors and the latter two as "useful idiots").

The Palestinians are not interested in Israel's withdrawal to the 1948(1949) borders - all they care about is to have Israel destroyed.
While the chances of peace between Israel and the Palestinians are slim, peace between Israel and the rest of the Arab world is quite feasible, so long as Israel withdraws from the territories it took in 1967 (which can be achieved by coordinated and decreasingly-gentle pressure from the rest of the world). No negotiations are necessary for that - the Palestinians might still kick and scream and still wouldn't recognise Israel and its right to exist, but they are powerless on their own.

Y,

So what you are saying is the armistice line of 1948 takes precedence over the armistice line of 1967?

Fat chance. Israel is not giving back Jerusalem.

Hamas is always firing rockets , I like Israel's Iron Dome technology that can trace projectile of each rockets fired by Hamas!!.