Yuyutsu, I think you misinterpreted my post - or, perhaps, missed the whole bit about not supporting the Siberia Solution. I don't think the student had any idea at all of how to solve the problem, but then again very few people do. It seems that the two groups have such contrasting aims that we cannot make one happy without devastating the other. Besides, we (as in we, the west) have messed around with other people's lives so much that you'd think we'd have learnt to back off by now. Every time we do something good, it seems to have a bad side-effect. But if we let go of the helm, what will happen?

"It seems that the two groups have such contrasting aims that we cannot make one happy without devastating the other"

Only two groups? only two aims?

You are right, Otokonoko, that it is not possible to make everyone happy simultaneously without devastating others (BTW, this is true not only in the middle-east).

To solve the middle-east conflict, one must first realize that it is not between "Jews" and "Palestinians". I often find on OLO how the attitude towards Israelis is coloured by thinking of them as "Jews" - just as the attitude towards Palestinians is coloured by thinking of them as "Muslims". While technically correct, most Israelis and most Palestinians do not give as much importance to their religion - while there are religious habits (and why not?), they have much more in common then in separation: most of them are ordinary people who just want to live and have a good and peaceful life.

There are however, on both sides, fanatics that would not accept normality, those for which being a "Jew" or a "Muslim" means more than life. If you want to help towards a solution, you must equally and delicately support the silent majorities against the crazy extremist minorities. It is a fine art though, any wrong move can throw the baby out with the bath water.

Unfortunately, too many contributors bring into the discussion foreign, unrelated political objectives that have nothing to do with the real situation in the middle-east and the welfare of its moderate and reasonable inhabitants.

In the 1920s, among their final acts as victors in World War I, the British and French created the states that now define the Middle East out of the ashes of the empire of their defeated Turkish adversary.

In a region that the Ottoman Turks had controlled for hundreds of years, Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states, Syria Lebanon and Iraq. Previously, the British had promised the Jewish Zionists that they could establish a "national home" in a portion of what remained of the area, which was known as the Palestine Mandate.

But in 1921 the British separated 80 percent of the Mandate, east of the Jordan, and created the Arab kingdom of "Transjordan." It was created for the Arabian monarch King Abdullah, who had been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian Peninsula and lacked a seat of power. Abudllah’s tribe was Hashemite, while the vast majority of Abdullah’s subjects were Palestinian Arabs.

What was left of the original Palestine Mandate – between the west bank of the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea – had been settled by Arabs and Jews. Jews, in fact, had lived in the area continuously for 3,700 years, even after the Romans destroyed their state in Judea in AD 70. Arabs became the dominant local population for the first time in the 7th Century AD as a result of the Muslim invasions. The Arabs were largely nomads who had no distinctive language or culture to separate them from other Arabs.

It is a little more indepth than good and naught people . Fairdinkum.

Should not be a surprise to anyone; The White Phosphorus is a Hoax; if this is humour, what does the media do when it is serious.
White Phosphorous has not be manufactured for weapons use in about 28 years,Probably much longer , although stocks where depleted 25 years ago I should have said ;- the only phosphorous that is used in modern times , is on tracer shells - the ammunition that lights up whilst in travel; hardly a mistake.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m50381&hd=&size=1&l=e

White Phosphorus burns and fires are reliably documented

See, for example:

- = + = -

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Israeli-39phosphorous-shells39-incinerate-1000s.4883418.jp

"Israeli 'phosphorous shells' incinerate 1,000s of tons of UN food as Gaza starves

Published Date: 16 January 2009
By Ben Lynfield and Ibrahim Barzak

ISRAELI shells set ablaze a food warehouse at UN headquarters in Gaza yesterday, destroying tons of emergency rations intended for needy Gaza civilians, a senior UN official said.

A pall of black smoke rose from the UN compound, visible across Gaza City. Flour spilled on the ground and mixed with soot as Palestinian firefighters tried to douse the flames.

"The main warehouse was badly damaged by what appeared to be white phosphorus shells," UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes said at a news briefing in New York.

"Those on the ground don't have any doubt that's what they were. If you were looking for confirmation, that looks like it to me." The compound belongs to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unwra).

The rights group Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using white phosphorus, which can create smoke screens or mark targets but also makes a devastating incendiary weapon.

Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the military fired artillery shells at the UN compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location, a version of events John Ging, director of Unwra in Gaza, rejected as "nonsense"

Mr Ging said Israeli shells first hit a courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN's main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames. Later, fuel supplies ignited, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air.

"It's a total disaster for us," said Mr Ging, adding that the UN had warned the Israeli its shelling put the compound in danger.

- end of quote-
any and all may read more by Googling "white phosphorus" on google news

True, Yuyutsu, that there are more than two viewpoints, more than two groups and more than two aims involved in this conflict. And certainly there are many for whom the conflict is more about staying alive from one day to the next than it is about eliminating the enemy - I am sure that, for many, the idea of having enemies is absurd. Just today I was reading a National Geographic article in which a Jewish archaeologist lamented (or, more accurately, hinted at lamenting) the end of an age when he would visit Palestinian villages now deemed off-limits to him. In those villages, he would visit and dine with friends. I am sure that, for him, the elimination of Palestinians would be a great tragedy; likewise, his friends in those villages would view the elimination of Israel and their Israeli friends as a tragedy. It serves as a reminder that not all Palestinians and not all Israelis see the other side as 'the enemy'. Thanks for making me think!