David, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!

Trying to whitewash Israel is equivalent to trying to make fine china out of coarsely ground pig's bones.

Cheers!

I found these article and video links

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.633044

http://youtu.be/x8t6s-9S3Ys

#Yuyutsu

The settlers narrative is not rubbish. They were given the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza by the unanimous decision of the League of Nations as confirmed by article 80 of the UN Charter.

Those rights were illegally denied to them between 1948-1967 after six Arab armies invaded Palestine and drove out all the Jews living there.

They returned after 1967 and disengaged from Gaza in 2005 for which they have received thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian population centers in Israel.

They are not ready or prepared to disengage from Judea and Samaria.

Once bitten - twice shy.

As for the Chinese? They are too busy occupying Tibet and building artificial islands in the South China Sea to bother about a piece of land the size of Delaware.

What other brain explosions might you have in mind?

If you come up with Jordan and Egypt as Arab interlocutors to replace the failed terrorist groups the PLO and Hamas - then perhaps we can have a rational discussion.

#tbbn

Must agree with you. Time to get Jordan and Egypt into the negotiating loop.

#Armchair critic

There are plenty of maps drawn up by cartographers that are accurate and readily available in a large range of textbooks and encyclopedias.

These four maps rejected by McGraw Hill have been found to be misleading and required to be trashed.

Israel's borders have been defined in the two peace treaties signed by it with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.

If you ever decide to publish a textbook on the Jewish-Arab conflict please let me edit it first. It is very embarrassing to have your hard work end up in the garbage bin - like these misleading maps.

#John Ryan

I am more than happy for you to point out any purported factual errors in my articles.

I always stand ready to be corrected.

#Alan B

The same goes for you. Point out any errors and we can discuss.

#David G

The same goes for you

#Armchair critic

What particular matters do you want me to direct my attention to in the links to which you have referred?

Do they in any way contradict anything I have written in this article?

Dear David,

<<If you come up with Jordan and Egypt as Arab interlocutors to replace the failed terrorist groups the PLO and Hamas - then perhaps we can have a rational discussion.>>

It's not up to me - it's up to them. However, Jordan and Egypt are not complete idiots and it would clearly be suicidal against their best interests to even touch those cursed territories with a long stick. Also, if Egypt and/or Jordan crash as a result, then Israel would end up with even worse neighbours than today.

On the other hand, if 2-3 million Chinese settled there, then I'm sure that nobody will dare to challenge or replace them. They are very resourceful people who could do much with the land. Their existing land is very crowded and polluted, so the offer of clean air can be quite attractive to them. Even if it's just the area of Delaware, it's nearly 6 times the area of Hong Kong (with population of 7 million). In addition, they will also gladly accept the Golan Heights, from where they can further expand into Syria, Iraq and why not even further?

<<They are not ready or prepared to disengage from Judea and Samaria.>>

Very well - then they (the settlers) are welcome to stay there as they please, but then they should not complicate the state of Israel with their territorial ambitions or expect its protection. Let them take full responsibility for their situation, create their own state and see how well or otherwise they do.

I think laws can be very subjective, they aren't necessarily always fair, and also I think that the pro-Israel supporters are being hypocritical calling on the law to settle arguments when Israel itself violates many UN resolutions.

That said, I'm not convinced any of these old agreements are worth the paper they are written on.
Firstly the Balfour declaration represented an agreement relating to the US involvement in that war and deciding the future spoils of winning that war before it was even won.

And the Mandate for Palestine, it just confirmed British rule over the area and allowed the plan to re-establish the national homeland of the Jewish people to begin, which was what the original deal (and probably the wars themselves too) were all about in the first place.

I'm not sure the Palestinians ever had any say in the matters and when looked at in light of the idea that people have the right to self determination then Israel doesn't have either a moral or legal leg to act the way it does, in my opinion.

I tried looking up about the objections which were made to these plans back when they were originally discussed and how it was warned that unending turmoil would be the result on these plans but these voices were ignored.

I couldn't find the references, but I know they are there I'll find them again some other time.

It's also part of the reason why I say that Israel has brought all these problems on itself.