ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

George, you are entitled to your own opinions. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

It is hardly worth debating you inasmuch you make up your own facts by the minute. Moreover, your hatred of Israel is palpable, making me wonder whether you are an Islamist.

I could continue to point out your many lies and errors, but what purpose would this serve?

Neither you nor I can accurately predict the future. Basing a moral choice today on such a prediction is at best a rationalization. ...

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Israel can be truly said to have a tiger by the tail -- and it is a situation of their own making, based on unwise, greedy, and unjust choices it made after the 1967 War.
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The United States has no reason to continue risking its vital interests just to preserve the advantage of one party in this dispute, particularly one that has been acting with such injustice towards the people in the territory it has occupied for forty years. ...

You have no basis whatever to conclude or suggest here that I am an Islamist. Indeed the facts available to you on this thread and others in which we have participated strongly suggest the contrary.
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Let's get this one straight; if you're an American Jew, you can own land in America and be protected by the government. However, if you are a Russian Jew, you cannot own land and be protected in America. Correct?

Do you include among the "Palestinian Jews" to whom you repeatedly refer to the million or so recent emigrees from the former Soviet Empire?

OF COURSE I DO!

There is a vital distinction between opposition to the existence of an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine and opposition to the existence of the Jewish people themselves. For example those who wish to see a single state solution, one embracing both peoples can be said to oppose the existence of an exclusively Jewish state. That doesn't mean they oppose the exiastence or the political rights of the Jews who live there.

I AGREE!

The Palestinians who in 1948 were displaced from their homes and land in what is now Israel are given no right of return or compensation for their losses. Is this justice?

OF COURSE NOT! However most of those palestinian arabs who left Israel in 1967 did so at the urging of those they mistakenly trusted and are enemies of Israel.

Since 1967 Palestinian property, homes and land in the occupied West Bank have systematically been taken from them to make way for Israeli settlements, often for immigrants from Russia. Palestinian towns and villages that remain are increasingly isolated from one another by Israeli limited access roads connecting their own settlements. Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints capriciously limit the travel and commerce of the people in the West bank. For forty years these peope have been subject to Israeli military rule with no voice whatever in their governance. On top of all this Israel claims virtue for itself for its expressed willingness to "give back" even a small fraction of what it seized by force. In fact what it is doing is ethnic cleansing of selected territories it intends to keep, but without any regard for the people who have lived there for centuries. This is no different from what Serbia attempted in Bosnia, and it is generally regarded as a crime against humanity.

What Israel is doing is taking such measures as it thinks will enable them to survive those arabs that Israel thinks rightly or wrongly want them to cease existing!

History amply demonstrates that this kind of discrimination and injustice is more than enough to create a revolution and lasting hatreds. The assertion that, after of all of this, the Arab Palestinians are necessarily in the grip of a pre-existing, irrational hatred of Jews is an insult to the common sense of the listener. This assertion may well be true in the case of sdome Palestinians, but its repetition suggests they have no other basis for their opposition - this is a gross falsehood.

Neither you or I can know for sure the real reason why the Palestinian arabs not Israeli arabs want Israel to cease existing! All we can know is that the Israeli arabs do not want Israel to cease existing.

The combined land of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza (i.e. Palestine) has a population that is about 51% Jewish and about 49% all others. This (unlike the proposed two state solutions) could indeed be the basis for a modern state with coherent economic life and control of airspace and water/mineral rights. However for such a state to exist there must be equal recognition of the rights and aspirations of all its people - not just a favored group. I can see no other possibility for peace and justice in the region. Indeed the track they are on now is getting worse - there is nothing but continued struggle in their collective future and contnued international isolation for Israel. Worse for them, the political foundation for their permanent trump card - the unquestioning support of the United States - is eroding very quickly.

I AGREE! However, I do not know how to relieve the Israelis of their fear, justified or not, that the palestinian arabs not the Israeli arabs want them to cease existing. Perhaps there is a little something the palestinian arabs not the Israeli arabs can do to relieve the Israelis of their fears. Do you have any ideas on that subject? If you do, please share them with us.

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[Israeli] posturing as the victim of supposed Palestinian opposition to their "existence"

You have said the equivalent of this many times. That does not make it true that the Israelis are "posturing" as you claimed. I proposed a way that the non-Israeli palestinian arabs could determine for themselves whether it was true or not. You apparently do not want to discuss that way. Why not?

... [The Israelis] have bullied their neighbors and the world into grudgingly accepting their unilateral expansionist policy, and have done so without regard for the long-term bad consequences.

The Israelis conquered the West Bank in 1967 in what they believed was their own self-defence. Since then they have given some of it back. Your accusation repeated so often without supporting evidence sounds more like a quote of lying propaganda than it is any validatable set of facts.

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I think the track we are on now will benefit no one - not us, not Israel, and certainly not the Palestinian victims of Israeli oppression and their own foolishness.

We agree! I have previously asserted the same thing many times. So have you.

... Unfortunately we have removed any incentive for the Israeli people to recognize and act on their real long-term interests.

Do you think we have removed the incentive for the Israeli people to try to survive? I know some of them. They are desperate to find a way they can end this conflict without sacrificing their own survival. While they may be wrong about the magnitude of the actual threat to their survival, they need some evidence to change their minds. So why not encourage the non-Israeli palestinian arabs to try the method I proposed previously. There's nothing for these arabs to lose and much to gain if they do try that method?

... The best we can do is to recognize that both peoples have an equal right to existence and freedom; that our unilateral guarantees to one side have benefitted no one and will inevitably be removed; and hope that the parties themselves will find a way to live together.

What specifically are the unilateral guarantees to one side that you allege must be removed?

Do you suppose the fact that they are armed settlements, provocatively placed on illegally seized land, protected by the IDF, and inevitably connected to a pattern of restricted (to them) access roads that further limit Palestinian daily life and commerce, just might have something to do with it?

You resort to so many half truths and so much sophistry that I am truly amnazed that you can refer to others as liars.