Keith:

So you - like Mac - have nothing better to offer the Palestinian Arabs or the Israelis than continuing the current conflict over a piece of land one tenth the size of Tasmania for goodness knows how many more generations to come.

What should the next step be when President Bush leaves office and his two state solution is given the last rites?

My suggestion is to get Jordan,Egypt and Israel to negotiate a division of the West Bank and Gaza. What's your proposal?

David Singer,

Olmert, McCain and Obama share my view... and you need to check their positions especially Obama's who is prepared to sit down and talk with the Iranians, cut and run from Iraq, cut defense spending and review the US Foreign Aid committment.
Then check McCain's position on Foreign Aid.

Doh.

Nobody of any consequence thinks your idea realistic or anything other than an attempt to legitimise the past and ongoning Israeli land stealing.

We all see your weasel words for what they are.

We all recognise it is Israel with it's land stealing, meddling and aggression that is the real impediment to peace ... no longer are the Palestinians viewed in the West as you warmongers would wish.

For Israeli's own sakes we all recognise, for Israel's long term security, it is best Israel gets out of the Palestinians' lands and removes those illegal settlements and settles it's borders... at '67 borders.

If that was done there would be peace tomorrow. But the Israeli's and you propaganda merchants are just shortsigted and blighted with tunnel vision to see the long-term eventualities from your stupid militarism and expansionism.

BTW where's your racist cheer squad gone?

In a more direct reply to David Singer, I would say that you could simply redraw the boundaries between Jordan, Syria and Egypt making Israel and the Palestinian Authority disappear. This would at least simplify the conflict in the Middle-East - the successor Arab states could no longer complain about Zionist colonisers because the Zionist state would be eliminated. Sure, the problem of Palestinian and Jewish oppression would continue but nobody would be able to blame their problems on Zionist machinations as the Arab states tend to do.

Keith,

you say >> "We all recognise it is Israel with it's land stealing, meddling and aggression that is the real impediment to peace ."

No Keith. No No No No No.

You seem to perpetually confuse your own wishful thinking with reality. The reality is that there is blame on both sides.

Unfortunately there is no body which actually represents the Palestinians as a whole, elected or otherwise. More importantly there is no person or group which is able to deliver a Palestinian bargain that includes all Palestinians.

Even during this so called ceasefire, the Palestinians are still lobbing rockets into Sderot. Who can Israel actually make peace with? It has only been recently that Hamas has accepted that Israel has a right to exist. I know you don't think that's a problem, but I can tell you that most of the civilised world believes it is.

BTW, I find it interesting that someone who supports the Hamas terrorists is not more careful about calling other people "warmonger". It has more than a touch of irony attached.

David Singer,

Shimon Peres seems to be under the misapprehension that the two state solution will work. So do the quartet. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-09/25/content_10105055.htm

Keith:

Tut, tut - "Nobody of any consequence regards your idea realistic"?

You have obviously not read my article in which I refer to two recent surveys conducted in the West Bank and Gaza where 28% of the Palestinian respondents already support such an idea and 69% regard the possibility of establishing a separate state as low to non-existent. Obviously these people are not regarded as being of any consequence by you. These numbers will only increase in future surveys if your recipe for doing nothing is followed. West Bank Arabs want to get on with their lives and are sick to the teeth of rabble rousers using them as fodder to pursue their own unattainable political agenda to wipe Israel off the face of the map.

David JS:

Obviously your suggestion will not be acceptable to Israel. However perhaps the restoration of the Caliphate and merging the 21 Arab States into one massive Islamic State alongside one miniscule sized Jewish State might be a possibility one day. Whilst most of these States continue to not recognise the State of Israel the conflict between Arabs and Jews is guaranteed to continue.

Paul L:

Peres and the Quartet have been saying the two state solution would work for the last six years - yet it has gone nowhere in that time because of two immovable Arab demands:
(i) That 500000 Jews get out of the West Bank
(ii) That millions of Arab refugees be admitted to live in Israel

Until these demands are dropped (and they have been pressed continuously in the same form for the last 40 years), the two state solution is dead in the water.

It would be interesting to know how Peres and the Quartet hope to overcome these fundamental impediments to a two state solution. If they can persuade the Arabs to abandon these demands then a two state solution might well be feasible. In my opinion however they have Buckley's of doing so. Hence the need for a new direction and a new approach to end the suffering of both Jews and Arabs.

David Singer,

I'd love to see the methodology of your 'survey'. If it is that one that was so-called independantly conducted by that US university then it is utter crap.

That one was presented on one of these forums some time ago. All sorts of fantastic claims were made about it.

After I researched it I made a few pointed enquiries to the person who had stated exactly as you have ... well the upshot was not surprisingly he/she never responded.

Among other things I asked the following:

Who were the authors?
Who conducted and was present at the interviews?
When and where did the survey interviews take place?
What questions were asked?

Care to respond?

The harder you try the sillier you'll look.

I quote real people and their public statements you respond with the results of a suspect survey conducted by a bunch of Israeli university under-graduates and then you attempt to deride me.

Laughable really ....