(Deep Breath) OK... here we go.

You live in a culdesac In a very strong Brick house. Your house is surrounded by 5 Other houses. In your back yard, near your closest neighbors house, there is a Tree house. It was there when you moved in.

Your neighbors say the tree house is theirs. You say it is yours.

Your kids want the tree house. So do your neighbors kids. A small minority of your family moves into the tree house in order to secure it. Your neighbors react furiously. The large majority of your house agrees to go to arbitration about ownership. This pisses off yourfamily members living in the tree house, but hey, it's the right thing to do.

Your neighbors kids want the tree house as well, and they throw rocks at it all day long to try and unnerve the occupants enough so they will abandon their claim. But a majority of your neighbors want peace in the hood as well, so they agree to arbitration also.

Now the Minority groups on both sides are pissed. Both want that treehouse no matter what, and arbitration is going slowly.

You start dragging the group occupying the tree house out one at a time as both a way to control your household as much as a good faith effort to show the neighbors that you are negotiating in good faith. The ones being drug out kick and scream and rant and rave, but you can control them.

Now on the other side, the minority group is uncontrollable. They will not see reason and do not want to make peace. They want what they want and there is no controlling them. In an effort to drive the occupants out of the tree house they poison your family dog. You react by going over to the neighbors and demanding that they hold the responsible party accountable. Lip service is paid about getting the culprits under control but the next day they shove a firecracker up your cats ass. You go over again and this time they won't answer the door, so you kick it in... again, lip service is paid about stopping the harassment. But the next day they disguise one of their own as a repair man who enters your house and boils your gold fish.

You put up a fence and video cameras and hire security and the arbitration breaks down.

You were willing to go to the table and work out a solution. You were willing to endure the wrath of your own family members who wanted the tree house. You were willing to try to work towards the day that you could share a beer with your neighbor.

Now in the meantime, your other surrounding neighbors have been watching all of this and laughing and egging the situation on. They will not directly help your aggressive neighbor, but they also will do little to reign him in. You see, they have had problems with this neighbor in the past, and they don't want anything to do with them really anymore.

So your fence is up. The lights are lit, the security guards walk their beat... and now your neighbor starts shooting a .22 at your house. Randomly and without aiming. They just shoot. The bullets are small and your house is strong and for the most part they do little to no damage, but occasionally one goes through a window or a chink in the mortar of your house, and oh crud... Gramma just took one to the temple.

What the heck, she was old and bound to die sooner than later, so well ignore it and them.

Then your uncle Frank takes one to the ass, and he has been a pain for the last 20 years always going on and on about how rough he had it as a kid, and now this is just going to fan the flames.

Then your wife takes one and dies in your arms.

And no, there are no police. There is no masked crusader to rescue you. You are all alone.

Then your grand daughter gets hit.

Finally enough is enough and you grab your gun and storm next door and bust in. But the neighbors are unwilling to point out the culprits, so you don't know who did it, so you hire a patrol to keep your neighbors locked in their own home.

But someone keeps firing from inside the house and blasting your stucco apart and your geraniums, and BLAMMO, damn, they got aunt Edna.

You rush next door with your sons and your guns and again... they will not help you find who is doing the damage.

The surrounding neighbors are now calling over their fences "OK. Hey! This has gone far enough! Stop now! We mean it!" But they won't take any direct involvement to help you stop the situation and get the neighbors to turn out the bad members.

Finally you go in, guns blazing, determined to blast anyone that looks like a rock throwing, dog poisoning, cat ass blowing up, goldfish boiling, Gramma, uncle, wife, daughter, aunty shooting son of a bitch.

What else could you do?

I am open to anything that can make me understand another viewpoint.

Chad

Kill them all, burn the house to the ground and salt the earth.

I should have added ... Never leave an enemy at your back

Let's not mention "Salting the Earth".

My "Better Half" saw an anthill in my nicely manicured front lawn, which I worked very hard to get, and decided the best way to kill them would be to pour a whole container of Morton's salt on the ant hill.

I sure could have dealt with the ants a heck of a lot easier than I can this HUGE burn mark in my lawn.

I'm still shaking my head over that one.

unreasonable and your actions reprehensible

You will be hearing from the United Neighbors.

Cheers

United Neighbors... LMAO

You forget to mention your subdivision was built on land owned by your back yard neighbors second cousin (four times removed). Your back yard neighbor is also a bit concerned that many of his family's lands have been taken from his family and given to your family. To add insult to injury, it appears your distant cousins from foreign lands are moving into areas once recently occupied by his family.

Your backyard neighbor would like to water his lawn, but because he and none of his family has land with water, he must do without. Your backyard neighbor also has troubles with electricity, heat and getting groceries. He would like to shop at Walmart, but its on land that requires a passport. He doesn't have a passport, and the border is closed.

1 - There are far too many past insults between these neighbors to adequately address them all, as you allude to.

2 - The nasty neighbor in general shares borders with the other 4 neighbors, in fact one in particular, yet they will not help, so how does this come back in your lap?

3 - You would be more than willing to help your neighbor get a varience in his property in order that he have access to walmart, electricty and water, but why would you want to help them if members of their house keep shooting their litle .22 at you all the time and the majority of the household will do nothing to stop it?

To follow the Americanition (should be a word) of their problem (which i'm thinking is less than wise)... Taxation without representation is tyranny... Since Israel is the occupying entity, whose overwhelming military control is over the occupied territories, I don't see how they can pass their responsibly onto anyone else. Did Jordan cause this problem? No, so why must Jordan provide succor to another countries population?

But enough quibbling (again, easy for us). I'd like to know how Israel is going to govern THEIR more populous antagonistic population without tyranny.

The wise say a two state solution won't happen, so what Israel do? Its their problem.

Americanition... OK. I'll vote for it being a word.

Why is it Israels Problem? There was NEVER a country called Palestine, it was a territory named such under British rule. Then from 1948 until 1967, much of the territory the Palestinians, strike that, HAMAS is fighting for was controlled by Egypt and Jordan. As I have pointed out in previous posts, the Palestinians were REFUGEES at that period of time as well and even now, Palestinians living in Jordan and other arab nations live in HORRENDOUS conditions in Refugee camps. They are not afforded citizenship, heck, they can;t even get passports from those countries. Look at the Gaza border with Egypt. When the Palestinians breached that border several weeks ago, they flooded the local egyptian economies with MILLIONS of dollars as they bought goods, but as soon as they had bought those good, the Egyptians kicked their asses right back acroos the border into the Hell of Gaza.

So YES, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon... they are ALL contributing and have also caused a great deal of this problem.

But a majority of your neighbors want peace in the hood as well, so they agree to arbitration also.

The only people that truly want peace in this neighborhood, besides the owners of the brick house, are the people who live in the good neighborhood way across town and the only reason they want it is because the people who are fighting work in the business they own and loss of an employee means losing money.

You were willing to try to work towards the day that you could share a beer with your neighbor.

I am willing to give plenty of credit to the family in the brick house but I think they never really were the "share a beer type", but rather a "wave and smile but keep walking into our own house type". This really should be enough though. You can't expect every neighbor to show up at the social functions.

Now in the meantime, your other surrounding neighbors have been watching all of this and laughing and egging the situation on. They will not directly help your aggressive neighbor, but they also will do little to reign him in. You see, they have had problems with this neighbor in the past, and they don't want anything to do with them really anymore.

I do think you are right that the neighbors don't want anything to do with the agressive neighbor but I think their motives are far more devious. You see, you moved into the wrong neighborhood. They don't like you because you are different and they won't do anything to stop the aggressive neighbor because they know you will eventually snap they might have a chance at finally driving you out and getting the neighborhood back.

I like the analogy but I think you are giving far too much credit to the surrounding neighbors who really are the bigger cause of the problem. When black families first started moving into white neighborhoods, all the racist neighbors loved it when some lunatic in the neighborhood spay-painted on the garage door or threw a brick through their window but they were always out in their yards condeming the act in the light of day.

I'm sure you realize though, I was going way out of my way to make sure the analogy was as balanced as possible.

I agree fully that the motives of the other neighbors is much more devious and that they have in fact been supplying the .22 shells and the poison and the firecrackers.

Thanks for the reply. Good stuff

Thank you, but be careful whe you are trying to be balanced. When you only weigh 150lbs it is not your fault that the 400lb fat chick on the other end of the titter-totter is yelling at you for not raising her up. Some times you just have to tell her she is too fucking fat so she will run away and you can get down and go about your playground business.

you are getting closer, but not quite there yet. Give me 900 words on how the Israels/Palestine confect compares and contrasts to other colonial/colonized struggles. I'm particularly concerned with your take on Kenya and South Africa.

... so because they were not Europeans, their homeland is not official? What makes the Europeans entitled to say whose homeland is or isn't a "country"? I'd love to see your attempt at justifying the destruction of Kurdistan.