While, I guess, the two occupations are not really at all comparable, he achieved his successes through non-violent means. While I have heard it argued that violence is the only bargaining chip that oppressed people can use, I would disagree, and use him as an example of someone who created leverage and incentive to broker greater freedoms for his people.

Brainwash said:

Why not simply quit the occupied territories and period?

You mean, Israel should quit the occupied territories? Outside of Jerusalem, I would agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, as someone who has lived in Israel and seen the particular dynamic of the hatred on both sides, I would hardly see that as an end to conflict. Can the "moderate" PLO, who aim to govern in the long-term, and whose very existence (according to their own charter) is hinged on the utter destruction of the existing state of Israel, control the even more radical elements of their constituency? I think not.

A cycle of mutual desperation leads suicide bombers to believe that murdering civilians, including women and children, will bring them closer to freedom. An innate inability to fight terrorism, to absorb continual acts of attrition, by an organized state, leads Israel to the conclusion that collective punishment, bulldozing houses, and cluster bombing will save their society. As long as these actors continue to work off of these premises, they will fail to achieve any peace.

Maybe non-violent protest would not work. Maybe the answer, on both sides, is alternatives to the desperation, to radicalism and murder, incentive to meet on a stronger common ground, as peoples that are sick of their friends and family ending up in the ground before their time. Maybe Israel, who possesses the money and power, should be providing these incentives to the Palestinians, helping them create an infrastructure in their territories, with the long-term goal of the formation of middle-class values within the Palestinian world.

I do not know if these things would work. But what is being done is not working, and many "liberals," a group that I generally consider myself a part of, are happy to cheer on the same heinous acts in this case, that they would decry as cold-blooded murder elsewhere. Most of them have learned about the conflict from books and newspapers, and are only exposed to polemic, rhetoric, and historically dubious, politically motivated points of view. Many conflate ideas regarding the current US "war on terror" with the Isra-Pal conflict, as an above poster, who insinuated specific racist or crusade-type motivation to the Israelis, a generally incorrect assessment of the type of hatred that I have heard expressed by that group.