Dear Joe,

I have always supported a two state solution,
with no further settlements.

I'm glad that we agree.

Comparing the democratically elected leader of Israel to a Hamas warlord is ridiculous.

The Palestinians have been offered a separate state with much of the land captured in 1967, but walked away. Today they refuse to even sit at the peace table, and cry victim while trying to murder Israelis.

The way this is going in 2067 Israel will have built its walls around the present West bank and Gaza, settled the rest, and the palestinians will be left with nothing but hatred and nothing else.

Not being too bright, it seems to me that there is Palestine and there is Israel, each in different territories. So why don't they (how naïve !) sit down and agree, then everybody can get on with building their respective states, and even co-operating where necessary ?

From that child-like point of view, if Israel wants to build a wall on its borders, then so be it: every country theoretically has that right. It's not Apartheid to do so, IF one group has its sovereign country (and borders) and another has its too. A wall marks the border. End of.

Of course, yes, there are the daily migrations for work, from Palestine to Israel. Perhaps if Palestine focussed on building up its economy, many of those workers would be employed in Palestine.

But as has been pointed out on another thread, in Islam, once land has been taken over by Moslems, it must forever remain Muslim. For those who are not Muslim, or don't fully agree with Islamic 'principles', that means nothing, it doesn't hold water. After all, in a country conquered by Moslems, what if the pre-existing population declared something similar, that their land would forever remain theirs, regardless of its conquest ? That might accord with international law by the way. But what privileges Islam ? It's all quite unilateral and arbitrary.

Joe

I find it amusing that people pumping for a Palestinian state are totally ignoring fact that Palestinians and their Iranian backers do not believe that the state of Israel should exist.

Come on folks. How about a little rational thinking. Too many of you are confusing blindness with kindness.

Dear Joe,

Here's a few facts for you. They're taken from Antony
Loewenstein's book, "My Israel Question." A thoroughly
researched work and published by Melbourne University
Press and required reading for year 12 high school
students:

Israel's 'security fence' has existed in the minds of
numerous Israeli politicians for many years, even
during the first intifada. The idea of separating the
two peoples gained currency within Israel especially
during the years of the second intifada. Some of the
barrier is wire mesh while other sections are high
concrete walls. In 2003 a total length of 650 kilometres
was approved by Sharon's Cabinet, and building commenced.

The barrier snakes across the West Bank and frequently
surrounds and steals Palestinian land and towns. Israel
claims the fence has saved numerous Israeli lives from
Palestinian terror, while the Palestinians rightly claim
that Israel is using the fence's path to determine future
borders of the Israeli state. Israel's Supreme Court
has ruled that sections of the barrier violate Palestinian
human rights but has accepted Israel's justification of the
fence as a security measure.

The international response has been largely negative. In 2004
the International Court of Justice found that the barrier
broke international law, primarily because of its negative
impact on the Palestinian residents along its route and
because of Israel's attempt to construct the wall on
occupied territory rather than along the 1967 'Green line.'

Loewenstein explains that during his visit to the West Bank
in early 2005, he spoke to many Palestinians who told him
of their inability to reach their land because of the wall or
of the severe difficulty experienced by their children in reaching
schools only a few kilometres away. It was hard for him
not to conclude that the Israeli authorities cared little about
the wall's effects on the Palestinian population.

Loewenstein believes that the true goal of Sharon's plan had
been to maintain control of the most fertile ground while
relegating responsibility for the Palestinian population
to a local administration.

to be continued...

cont'd ...

Dear Joe,

All three major political parties in the 2006 Israeli elections
essentially argued for the same outcome: for the Palestinians
to disappear, or be made invisible to Israeli eyes. Sharon's
unilateral strategy has survived his incapacitation. Some
30 years ago, Moshe Dayan explained the thinking that continues
to this day. Loewenstein tells us that Israelis should tell the
Palestinians in the territories that 'you shall continue to
live like dogs, and whoever wishes, may leave, and we shall
see where this process will lead.' The occupation should
remain permanent in one form or another, Dayan argued.

Loewenstein further tells us that the situation for the
Palestinians remains dire. The death of Arafat in 2004 and
the election of Mahmoud Abbas as President in January 2005
was seen as heralding a new era. However, the Hamas victory
in the 2006 Palestinian elections - primarily intended as a
rebuke to the corruption and stalled peace negotiations
conducted by Fatah - signalled a rocky road ahead, given that
the USA and Israel have refused to negotiate with the
democratically elected Palestinian government.

Loewenstein says that peace will not arrive without
fundamental changes. "Every Western pundit or official who
pontificates about Palestinian terrorism needs to ask how
forgetting the fact of the occupation is supposed to stop
terrorism", Edward Said wrote in 2001. Arbitrary arrest,
incarceration without trial, the killing of civilians,
inhumane roadblocks and settlement expansion all lead the
Palestinians to one conclusion: the Israelis, and their
US backers, aren't serious about peace.