Only the Ignorant or extremist Jews think the problem lies with the Arabs right now.

The only way I can see this being fixed is if Israel adopts a two party system similar to the United States where people can vote for one or the other! Peace or no Peace! Not the current system where you have extremist Jews who want to expand Israel and conservative Jews who want to make a real attempt at peace “trying” to “work” together in a coalition to make peace with the Arabs.

3. Hamas has time on its hands! Israel as an ideology is dieing! The numbers of Jews moving to Israel is drying up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah but as each day goes by the Palestine’s get more angry and the Arabs get more money thanks to oil and the like!

Israel should try and make peace while it still has most of the chips! As each year passes more of those chips go into the hands of the Arabs!

For the benefit of future generations of Israeli I hope they make peace soon!

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10960108

EasyTimes

As I said above, I am NOT going to get into a discussion about who is to blame.

A few points about your posts:

You write:

"Only the Ignorant or extremist Jews think the problem lies with the Arabs right now."

The evidence says to me that neither the Arabs nor the wider Muslim world will EVER accept the legitimacy of a Jewish enclave in what they regard as Dar-ul-Islam. I have yet to meet a Muslim prepared to countenance Israel's continued existence AS A JEWISH STATE.

So, A meaningful peace, one which guarantees Israel's security, is NOT an available option. Regardless of what deals may be struck now, Muslims will seize the first opportunity to destroy Israel. Jews who pretend otherwise are practising wishful thinking.

You may be right in saying that Israel as an "ideology" is dying. Many Jews may decide to pack up and leave. They can do the calculations as well as I can. I am not optimistic about Israel's longer term chances of survival in an increasingly Muslim dominated "Eurabia" region.

Would Israel "die quietly?"

Seymour Hersh reported in "Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy" that in 1973 Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan were hours away from ordering a nuclear attack on Cairo. They stood down only when Kissinger phoned to tell them a US re-supply operation was starting up.

Since then American policy towards Israel has been guided by one principle. Israel must never again be in a position where it feels there is nothing left to do but press the nuclear button and go down in a blaze of radioactive glory. That, rather than AIPAC, has been the reason the US has kept Israel well supplied with conventional weapons.

Since 1973 Israel's nuclear capabilities have multiplied. Here you have a country with a well advertised MASADA COMPLEX* and with the capability to take out one third of the world's oil pumping capacity on 15 minutes' notice.

How will this end?

I don't know.

*See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/masada.html

The fear of Iran letting off nukes if they have them isn't really problem.....well it is, but it isn't. It's the political muscle power that nukes would give the fruitloops that run Iran. Of course Iran wouldn't want their own territory vapourised. Neither would Israel, obviously. But that question is still there. Could they really do it if provoked hard enough?. Nuclear detonation is the the 'final solution' in warfare. The world CANNOT allow a nation like Iran to have that sort of political clout. In war there is only one weapon greater than a nuke. That's fear. Picture the fear of cuban missile crisis and then lay those weapons in the hands of 'GOD-DRIVEN' anti-christian, anti-semitic, anti-western militant crazies. We would have to be insane to hand that sort of power over. We talk about fear of Israel and us. What about the political clout and arrogance that would give Iran over its neighbours. I don't believe they could handle it, and I believe the fear that would create would further implode the ME. The other Islamic nations in the ME would have to be isane to allow Iran that sort of power over them.

It will never happen as long as Israel is on the map.

The other thing with Iran having nukes is as well. You're all under the assumption that Iran will 'deliver' those nukes to Israel via missile. The only way Israel will have fore-warning of an attack is if they ARE fired at them with missiles. What's to stop 'a militant organisation' from detonating one just off the coast from a boat?. Or having been transported via truck?.

It's a FACT Iran backs fundamentalist terror groups. What's to stop an Iranian backed terror group from letting off 'dirty bombs' using DU?.

A scenario. A nuclear weapon is detonated in some desert. Next day CNN gets a call from 'unknown militants' demanding Israel releases all militant 'freedom fighters' and ceases action against 'friends of Allah', America withdrawals all it's assets from the ME etc etc. If not, two more nuclear weapons will be detonated in populated western cities, and five 'dirty bombs' will be detonated in other western cities.

What do you do?. 'Five years ago' you gave Iran nuclear capability and free-reign on nuclear weapon development. Quite easily there could be that sort of weaponry in the hands of militants.

Get my point?. Iran doesn't HAVE to be under direct threat of retaliation if they unleash nuclear global terror.

There seems to be no recognition that there is no solution.

The Jews turned up in Jerusalem some millennium ago.
They were there for a very long time, maybe Boaz David can insert the dates.

Then the Romans threw them out around 60AD.

Aound 300 or 400 AD the Arabs turned up.
In 1946 the Jews came back.

So the Arabs claim it is their land and demand Jerusalem.
The Jews say we had it before you.
The Arabs say we have been here for nearly 2000 years.
The Jews say we have been here for four thousand years.

Both claim sole rights and cannot give way for religious reasons.

So thats it a problem without solution.

Bazz,

A few points of fact.

The Zionist enterprise pre-dates 1946. It is over a century old. The word "Zionism" itself was coined in 1890.

Most Zionists were secular. So are most Israelis.

Religious Jews were on the whole opposed to Zionism until about 1945.

The concept behind Israel was a safe haven for Jews who were suffering persecution in many countries. Politically correct propaganda notwithstanding, Jews were also suffering discrimination, if not outright persecution, in most Arab countries long before Israel existed.

Jews began moving back to Israel in fairly large numbers from the turn of the 20th century. Mostly they lived on land that was purchased from Arab landowners.

However there has been a continuous, albeit tiny, Jewish presence in Israel / Palestine for millennia.

The number of Jews who fled to Israel prior to the Holocaust would have been greater but for the obstruction of the British.

Before the establishment of Israel as a state and before the start of mass Jewish migration after 1948, there were already 600,000 Jews living in Israel. Most of these would have been born in Israel or arrived prior to the start of World War 2.

Nearly half the current population of Israel is made up of refugees from Arab countries, and the descendants of such refugees. These folk will never voluntarily share a state with large numbers of Muslims, let alone large numbers of Arabs.

If the same criterion for "refugee" is applied to Israelis as is applied to Palestinians then nearly 40% of the Jewish population of Israel consists of "refugees." (Bear in mind that most Palestinian "refugees" were born outside Israel. In fact the parents of many Palestinian "refugees" were born outside Israel.)

I am simply offering up fact.

I am NOT going to enter into the debate as to who, legally, morally, ethically, etc owns Israel. Nor am I going to debate the legitimacy or otherwise of a Jewish State in what most Muslims consider to be Dar-ul-Islam.