Scoot'r-d:

greeneggsnham I am looking at history to emphasize the hypocrisy in the condition the Palestinians face. In the 30's European Jewry faced a monstrous ethnic inequity at the hands of Germany. Yet by the late 40's those same people were imposing another ethnic inequity on others. Though it is nowhere near as monstrous it is hideous that the Jews would find it acceptable to employ such tactics that were unjustly dealt to them. Today European Jews are seeking reparations for real estate and private properties wrested from their families in WW2. Yet they refuse to even consider doing the same for the Palestinians. I bring up South Africa only as an example where the world imposed their collective will upon a country to right a wrong. The UN has made its gutless denunciations about how the Gaza Palestinians are managed. Our gov't has voiced its concerns. But no country is doing anything substantiative to entice Israel into a more conducive attitude. Imagine what and end to funding and a travel ban to Israel might say about the depth of our displeasure? That said I have to agree and acknowledge that the situation between Israel and the Palestinians is so messed up that I cannot conceive of any simple solution. A single ring of a bell is impossible to recoup and this one has been pealing loud for decades. But the mere acceptance by Israel that its policies were/are unfair and wrong might be a good starting point. In their religious zeal to establish a country on hallowed lands they have stomped all over the rights and dignities of others and continue to do so.

well, i can't speak for everyone else, but it's ok with me if the Palestinians get compensation for their losses. i can't speak for the Israeli public, but my opinion is that that would be OK with them too. the one thing they'd like in return, however, is the right to be left alone to continue to live in Israel without continuous hostilities. they took some steps in that direction a few administrations ago, got nowhere, and decided to go in a different direction and see if that worked. of course, it doesn't. it's likely that the "solution" to the problem is not in the Israeli's power; it lies in the Palestinians' decisions.

but there's a lot of semantic confusion. "The Israelis stole the Palestinians' country". It's pretty hard to steal a country. Even the German Nazis, so often referenced here, couldn't manage to steal Poland successfully. What precisely do people mean by the term?

That at one point there were more Arabs than Jews in Israel, later on there were more Jews than Arabs? That in itself doesn't exactly constitute a horror, unless you are of the ilk who believe that the increasing number of Hispanics in towns named Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Boca Raton, etc. needs to be stopped for the common good. Nowhere is it written that you have the right to live in a country where all your neighbors belong to your particular tribe.

That "Jews stole the lands of individual Palestinians", or at least took them over without payment when the owners were forced to leave? true in some cases, but not anywhere near as universally often as most of the people who confuse it with "stole their country" seem to believe. Anybody who grew up familiar with Jewish-Americans (and presumably Jews elsewhere) in the 20th century remembers the large sums continually drummed up from donations every year to purchase land in Israel from the landowners.

Much of the land was under the ownership of rich Turkish absentee landords, after the Ottoman empire, as well as a general decline in the fortunes of individual farmers. Despite the wish/belief of the residents that the land they occupied was theirs, this was not the case. Others may not have had this problem, but as you may imagine, tracing land ownership and deeds in the Middle East is a bit more difficult than doing so in Kansas. There has been a fair amount of compensation paid by Israel to Palestinians who could prove they lost their land; undoubtedly there are many more who deserve it, but can't prove it. Still, while it would be nice to require Israel to pay every claim without question, relying on the basic honesty of the Palestinians, a little thought should show that to be pretty much an unworkable idea. This is something the Israelis and Palestinians could solve, in the context of peace talks! How about that! Of course, the question of compensation for property lost by Jews forcibly displaced from Arab countries, approximately equal in number to the the Arabs displaced from Israel, won't come up. I'm sure there's a good reason for that, other than that the Jews are less intransigent.

which brings up the only possible solution, as almost everybody knows: peace talks leading to a two state solution. or a three state with gaza being the black sheep. unfortunately, successful talks tend to require that one side not stand up and walk if the initial offers do not match what their final demands are. You Know Who You Are. And it doesn't lead to a drive to continue talks when the other side is then lambasted for making an initial offer which the other side decides was an insult. "Mr. Smith, please tell the court what happened when you spoke with the used car salesman" "Well, he named a price which I thought was too high, so I immediately walked out and then later I shot him. Who could blame me?"

of course, there's the other semantic problem: "end the Israeli occupation of Palestine" means the West Bank and Gaza to the good hearted liberal; to the Hamas member it means Tel Aviv and Haifa. While the average Israelis who do not live in the West Bank will see very little problem with evicting the Israelis who do live there in exchange for not getting their own house blowed up, they are less likely to accept being evicted themselves, in exchange for nothing more than the possibility of the nations of the world finally shutting up about the nasty Jews.

And finally: this all could have been solved in 1967 when the Israelis were ready to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt, in exchange for the usual treaties of peace, etc., as is usual with every such international conflict in the modern era including previous Middle East clashes, and as was demonstrated when Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt in exchange for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Instead, the world got the infamous Khartoum agreement between the Arab nations: "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel", essentially the Arab countries giving the Palestinians up to be human weapons in their war against seeing a modern country intrude into their feudal corner. A destiny has become literally true for too many Palestinian individuals. Things could have been different.

So, to sum up: I, and I assume many like me, do not argue with your assessment that the Palestinians are getting screwed and deserve better. I do agree with your final assessment, it's a complicated mess, but that's not unusual where people are involved, even in marriages. I do, however, wonder what makes people decide that this situation, of all those in the world, is the most egregious and the one where they need to put their efforts to help the oppressed? I mean, if a person is Palestinian, or Israeli, or Islamic, or Jewish, or Arabic, OK, you may have a personal interest over and above objective moral analysis. But what motivates somebody with no connection to either side in the Middle East to decide that reducing the deliveries of fuel to Gaza takes precedence over Darfur, or New Orleans, or Native American reservations, or all the other places on Earth where time and effort would reap rewards? I mean, we sort of know why the born-again Christians of the Bush administration take an interest in the conflict, their religion tells them it's the most important thing around, Armageddon and all that. But for sane, progressive, liberal folks following a natural inclination to help the underdog, to decide that the economic deprivation of some people as a result of continuing acts of warfare takes precedence as "genocide" over the completely arbitrary and unwarranted massacre of whole populations? I don't get it.