The Israeli government iis still selling occupied and stolen Palestinian land to it's settlers.

No amount of deceptive or irrelevant claptrap, that you continually raise as a smoke and mirrors, can change that simple fact. At the end of the day all conflicts everywhere boil down ro wars over land or resources. That is the source of the conflict in the mid east, and Israel is the sole perpretrator of all the wrongs in these regards.

The west has woken up to that fact.

You know you cited Israels peace with Egypt and Jordan but you didn't say Israel was dragged and forced to those peace by the US. I think in the next few years the same thing is going to occur with Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Israel has shot itself in it's own foot and the world has woken up to the propaganda being spewed from Israel and it's apologists.

Get a life? Me? I have one ... it's the repressed Palestinians who need one and you and your mates are preventing that from occuring. Shame on you.

Keith

What's this about me and my mates? You love to generalise and stereotype.

Where is your evidence that Israel is selling stolen land? And how many countries in that region stole Jewish land? Egypt, Iraq, Hebron?

And how is Israel to blame for all the problems in the middle east including the Shia and Sunni killing each other in Iraq, Fatah trying to kill the Hamas President, children being brainwashed into murderous Jihad, and further afield the horrors commited by the Taliban, the bombings of trains in London, Madrid and Bombay?? Do you think the middle east would be any more peaceful without Israel?

And what about the denial of rights to women forcing them to wear restrictive clothing restricting their rights to travel and education and the lack of secular education?

I suppose you blame Israel or the US for that. In Israel you have a fair ammount of self criticism in the newspapers, as in any democratic society. You would not even have an a free OLO in any Arab country that I know of.

It is not smoke and mirrors. Stop blaming tiny Israel and solve your own problems. Did the Palestinians thrive under Jordanian or Turkish rule?

Apparently Logic, from their recent comments and findings Tony Blair and Jimmy Baker agree with me. You are right though, you are not the lone stereotyped propagandist I've attempted to depict. You have plenty of mates ... but none of you, none of you have picked the wind direction yet.

Next irrelevance please....

Dvir, great article! Violence makes headlines, but behind the scenes, there is also a surprising amount of friendship and cooperation between people, and there needs to be much more.

My only criticism: The phrase “…extremists like Hezbollah and Hamas…” cries out for balance. Not because there is some comparable Israeli organization – there isn’t. But in this context, one simply cannot mention the extremists on one side and not the other.

Re David Grossman, it is worth noting that this summer, two days after Grossman called for a ceasefire and negotiated solution to the violence that broke out between Israel and Hizbullah, his son Uri was killed during an IDF operation in Lebanon.

Boaz_David,

1) As noted in http://www.slate.com/id/2156086 , the Bible doesn’t actually refer to a lion lying with a lamb :)

2) The residents of Neve Shalom are Arab and Jewish Israelis. While they are not necessarily displaced or exiled, they too are “effected dramatically by the conflict”, as is everyone in the region.

3) You’d have to ask individuals how they’d react to your vision for East Jerusalem. On the whole, residents tend to be quite left-wing and probably wouldn’t like your Temple-focused triumphalism.

4) Neve Shalom is not wealthy; resources are scarce. You’re selling them short if you think that their binational approach would collapse at the first sign of economic stress.

5) You’d have to ask individual Arab residents what they think about possibilities for compensating refugees.

6) Re religion, see http://www.nswas.com/article463.html No, they are not religious in a conventional sense, but it is presumptuous to assume that they are all atheists or secular, and that “they could not in any way be seriously religious”.

Keith, re Abraham Lincoln, you’ve got to be kidding! Are the values of Lincoln the same as those of today’s Israelis and their supporters? Most of them, yes. Lincoln was raised a Baptist, but see http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/Abraham_Lincoln.html and http://www.adherents.com/adh_presidents.html ) Do we all have to Baptists or Deists now in order to quote Lincoln approvingly?

Sganot

I think you missed Lincoln's attitude to oppression and freedom somewhere mate.
He would have been against rhe 40 year occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.

You see those are fundamental beliefs and practises of Baptists.
I don't think any reasonable person could say the Israelis believe or practise those concepts, towards the Palestinians.

Logic

'Where is your evidence that Israel is selling stolen land?'

You asked.

Read this from todays NYTimes.

First Settlement in 10 Years Fuels Mideast Tension.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

How can anyone defend this?

Among other things it is out and out aggression at a time when Olmert pretends to seek peace with Abbas. Abbas is made to look stupid.

One of the outcomes:
Hamas look the good guys ... to Palestinians.

Now really how stupid are the Israelis?