Le mort de Farfour

The answer is: because of Palestinian suicide bombers. The Israelis didn't put those miserable things into place simply because they wanted to.

I agree with you that there is a rotten cycle at work here. But wouldn't you agree that if the Palestinians would cease suicide-bombing and otherwise trying to kill Israelis, that the walls and checkpoints would come down?

There's the problem right there - it's not *the Palestinians who commit those acts. It's some terrorists who are Palestinian who commit those acts. Those acts are, for better or worse, responded to by some Israeli murderers who happen to be in the Israeli army.

No one would ever accuse the entirety of the Israeli population of being responsible for the few atrocities that a few members of its army commit, would they? Why then must the entirety of Palestinian Muslims bear the burden of responsibility for the acts of a few? Would you appreciate all of Chrstendom being held responsible for the Phelps family? How about the McVeighs? The Koreshes?

No one has noted the most depressing point of this clip ---- Palestinian children being taught that Tel-Aviv is occupied land to be liberated. Not Ramallah, not Hebron ---Tel-Aviv!

If Tel-Aviv is occupied territory, then truly this conflict has no solution. It's literally existential.

First up, Dana's got an awesome point...which I think illustrates the lunacy of Islamic militacy, however...

Second, Rod, although I agree with you, definitely check out the details behind the first Intifada in 1987. There were sit-ins, boycotts of taxes and Israeli goods and peaceful marches, only to be broken up by rubber bullets (sometimes) and tear gas. When Israel closed the schools, Palestinians opened up schools in homes only to be raided by Israelis, when the cut off food supplieds, pioneers implemented private agricultural development and food sharing programs in small communities. Hospitals were closed, and reopened in mosques and churches, only to be raided by Israelis, curfews were imposed until they would start paying their taxes! They didn't pay their taxes though because they weren't the beneficiaries of the taxes. This started in the Bethlehem area but didn't spread to all of the West Bank because Israel laid siege to the town (Beit Sahour) and until they started to pay taxes.

The high hopes of Olso caused the abysmal effects of the First Intifada to be forgotten by the Palestinians, which was nice for a period of time and an era of good feels had begun, or so they thought. But after Rabin was assassinated (by a Jew), and the Likud government was elected, Israel intentionally had forsaken the agreed-upon timeline for further intern self-government negotiations, denied any right to return for refugees, increased settlement expasion (which, ipso facto, requires the confiscation of Palestinian lands), thus totally compromising the HUGE measures the Palestinians took towards a peaceful settlement. The first suicide bombs were AFTER Oslo, a direct result of the complete disregard the Israeli authorities had for the Agreement.

There's a double-edged sword. When a Jew, like, for example, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, walks into the Al Ibrahimi mosque in 1994 with a machine gun and ices 25 Palestinians at prayer, the Jewish authorities write him off as a psycholocially unstable character and no one hears about it, but when a Hamas blows up a bus, they're a terrorist and it's all over American television sets. How about this: they're both terrorists! Similarly, a month ago, two Jews got into the taxi cab of a Palestinian and asked him to drive them to Tel Aviv. Yes, we don't hear of these things in America. When they got there, they slit his throat! Again, these two guys are thrown into the "psychotic" bin, as opposed to ANYONE who acts out in violence is a psychotic.

I'm no liberal, but sometimes I question the effectiveness of violence, any violence, anytime, anywhere, by anyone... This is why I hate abortion so....

The biggest misconception is that this conflict is about religion. It's not. It's about land. The West Bank is situated in Judea and Samaria, two ancient biblical regions that the Jews want for "Eretz Yisrael" or "Greater Israel" to fulfill the Davidic kingdom they feel they are entitled to. Now, I'm not going to question whether or not they are entitled to this, but they're are a lot better ways of incorporating land than with violence. More importantly, in UN Resolution 242, the world community through the UN Security Council condemned the annexation of the West Bank (and the other territories) by declaring "the inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war." This means, in laymans terms, no more conquering, ever. The West Bank today, as the UN has recognized it to be falls under an "occupied territory." Because of this, its residents have certain rights under the Geneva Conventions. These rights, include, but are not limited to, no arbitrary arrests, no collective punishments (4th Geneva Conv) -- (Wall Wall Wall), no forced individual or mass transfers, no detaining without trial (and when they are detained, it has to be in the occupied territory, in the case is Israel, they're detained in the Israeli Negev), and no distruction of private property (Art. 33 of the 4th Geneva Conv.) and no "coercive means of interrogation). Furthermore, the Palestinian Red Crescent had explicitly documented the treatment of wounds caused by metal tipped rubber bullets in CHILDREN. The second cause of death, as documented by Physicians for Human Rights, is tear gas, no the basic run-of-the-mill tear gas, but tear gas that has carcenogenic elements, has been known to cause heart failure, liver failure and misscarriages. These gas attacks, if executed outdoors, would not have been fatal as the gas would have been diluted from air-dissapation. This was not the case, because they did have such adverse affects, it suggests they were used in enclosed buildings. Perhaps to weed out a terrorist nest? Not if the victims were children and expectant mothers IN CHRISTIAN AREAS- (seige of Beit Sahour, 1987). They were used to close down make-shift schools and hospitals who operated without Israeli permission (Israel didn't grant them permits, or if they had them to begin with, closed them down for not paying taxes).

You see, friends, as Phil Collins says, "we always need to hear both sides of the story..."