Antony,

Arguably the settlements are unacceptable, but that issue is still a relatively trivial source of the antagonism fueling the conflict.

In light of the Hamas charter, for instance, it is clearly Islrael's very existence that is deemed unnacceptable to Islamic racists.

That you know this yet care less about it is a very big part of the problem, since effectively commentators like you become the proxies of "Occidentalism" in the Western discourse on this problem, which in turn feeds back into all manner of eventualities on the ground in Palestine.

That you only consider the US the daddy of "its client states" rather than their passive client betrays your Chomskyite assumption of the childlike status of Arabs (or non Westerners in general - a legacy of Said's anti-Westernism). To you only Westerners, namely the US, can possibly be causal players rather than effective reactors in regards to foreign affairs.

Yet your sort of naive adolescent commentary is proof that Islamists have Western pawns too (Bin Laden praising Chomsky!)

Unless police are justified in matching the tactics used by criminals then the criminal wins. And only those fighting for freedom for all people can justly be called police. The flow of migration since WWII has voted on whose ends justify those means.

Yet you can't stomach the way that bespeaks of the world's still being largely populated by tribal rednecks. Perhaps Iraq ought to be divided and always should have been. And perhaps then those future states will divide again, and again. Should East Timor have been divided off from Indonesia? Should Kosovo be divided off from Serbia?

The link regarding your claim about the human rights report into isreal's "nearly always ... automatic convictions" is weakly based on the childish demand that military courts become civilian courts. But under such critieria WWII would still be going!

Besides, a glance at institutional structures throughout the Middle East give an indirect indication of the likelihood of who are the unjust and just antagonists. Where would you prefer to live in the middle east - Israel or elsewhere? There's the standard.

Passy,

We have much common ground here. Although I'm yet to be convinced of the workability of the single state solution. But only because of the impossible hurdles of bigotry and absence of allegience to true democratic values by the Israeli Jews.

I've always thought of a return to the '67 borders and any of illegal the settlements, that remain, to be under the soverignity of the new Democratic Palestinian state. You'd remember they held elections recently and they were judged fair by the UN observers. They returned a government unacceptable to the Israelis. That democratic action resulted in intervention in their affairs by the Israelis with the murder and jailling of many Palenstinian leaders.

That was the worst display of anti-democratic practice by a country claiming traditional western liberal democratic values, since the time of Hitler ... Apart from the invasion of Lebanon of course.

KEITH... glad to see you are having reservations about Passy's socialist "One State" solution.

At least now we can see why there is a strong link between the Socialists and Muslim Brotherhood. Yes.. that's right.. because in terms of Passy's little blurb..

1/ an Arab working class uprising against the dictators who rule them offers any long term hope for the region,......(hope for who?)

Which is typical 'communist-speak' .. a view of the world seen though hegelian socialist blinkers.. it makes the fatal assumption that 'religion' plays no part in the underlying rumblings in Egypt. Sees the world purely in 'materialistic economic' terms.

2/and in such revolutionary times the spark in Arab countries could catch fire in Israel itself so we would see Arab and Jewish workers united against the common enemy - capitalism.

GOOOD GRIEF Passy.. you may as well have just tumbled out of the idiological ARK...I'm suprised that you have not yet tweaked to the fact that communism is dead. Its ideas were flawed and it simply does not 'click' in Islamic countries.

I strongly suspect that there may be a core (a rotting core) of hard line commy's in Egypt..driven by ideology. But I also suspect there aer MANY MORE Muslim brotherhood types. I further suspect that each will help the other for selfish reasons "Once we take over, we can dispense with that lot" but in the mean time..they see value in cooperation..

Actually boaz, I'm going to have to agree with you on that score.
Whilst I've nothing against moderate socialists or muslims, I can see the militant wings of each belief set uniting to achieve their aims, though I would hope that the socialists don't display the same naivete that passy just did in relation to the motivations of their erstwhile allies.

Playing a peace process is not synonymous to a peace itself because nothing can please fanatics of any side of extremes.

Existing of non-Muslim non-Arabic state in region itself is a score to local rednecks while Jews-friendly education in a Muslim world will bear results in much remote times than vice versa process in Israel.

Perhaps, both Jewish and Arabic diasporas should take a lead as both of them have been discriminated non-discriminatorily in Anglo-Commonwealth world surely.

Boaz_David says:

"GOOOD GRIEF Passy.. you may as well have just tumbled out of the idiological ARK...I'm suprised that you have not yet tweaked to the fact that communism is dead. Its ideas were flawed and it simply does not 'click' in Islamic countries."

Actually the overthrow of Stalinism was a great thing for the Left because those regimes had nothing to do with socialism and their overthrow shows that ordinary working people can change the world.

The Islamic world has a long history of working class struggles. Iran in 78 and 79 was a working class movement, but it was captured by the Islamists because of the inadequate anlaysis and action of the Iranian left.

David goes on to say:

"I strongly suspect that there may be a core (a rotting core) of hard line commy's in Egypt..driven by ideology. But I also suspect there aer MANY MORE Muslim brotherhood types. I further suspect that each will help the other for selfish reasons "Once we take over, we can dispense with that lot" but in the mean time..they see value in cooperation.."

I think that the Communist Party (or its remnants) may still exist in Egypt, athough I don't really know. I'd like more information about their politics before commenting specifically on them, but I think it fair to say if democratic elections were held in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood could well win. I doubt the Left after years of repression has much sway, or else has been co-opted into Mubarak's regime. However in the long term class divisions will arise and breath life back into the socialist movement in Egypt and elsewhere around the world.(No, I do not mean the stalinists, they are politically dead almost everywhere and are the objective antithesis of socialists.)