As a resident of the Israeli town of Kfar Saba, I can confirm that since the barrier went up there are far fewer attacks. Car theft is also down.

Regarding the lack of commerce between us and Qalqilya... We used to shop in Qalqilya all the time. However, it was not the barrier that stopped us, it was Intifada II. It was the violence itself that kept us away... The wall came later.

Well, but also:

"Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us."
Albert Einstein

"...If we had invested in the Arab problem one tenth of the energy, the passion, the ingenuity, the resourcefulness
which we developed in order to gain the support of Britain, France, the US and Weimar Germany, our destiny in the development of Israel may have been quite different... We were not ready for compromises; we did not make sufficient efforts to get, if not the full agreement of the Arabs, at least their acquiescence to a Jewish state, which I think would have been possible. That was the original sin."
Dr. Nahum Goldmann
President of the World Jewish Congress
writing in the New Outlook,
November-December 1974

Are you really trying to refute factual allegations with quotes, of which the most recent is from 30 years ago? None of this changes one thing: the day the Arabs decide to stop trying to kill us, we can live with them in peace. The converse has never been true.

What is the Israeli side of the compromise? If they stop trying to kill us we will stop killing them?

What do the Palestinians get from the bargain? The right to have themselves recognized by their Israeli "benefactors?"

Your post presumes that you have anything to give them that they do not already have a right to.

Oh, and if the violence against Israelis is down, then why is the violence against Palestinians up? I suppose because even in times of cease-fire the Israelis reserve the right to strike at terrorists, even when the terrorists do not or cannot effectively strike at Israel.

Terrorism is the tactic of desperation. You live in a colony which continues to expand

Let me ask, what will be the soltution to "perserve the Jewish identity of Israel" when the Arab-Israeli population exceeds the Jewish-Israeli population.

The solution - as I see it - is true freedom, true democracy and true equality, not a situation where Jewish ethnic nationalism trumps the freedom of all people. THAT is what stands in the way of peace.

All this chatter about "freedom and democracy" coming from the Palestinian side is just so much western liberal "useful idiot" nonsense. If and when Arab Israelis outnumber Jewish Israelis, or, if several generations of Arabs descended from the Palestinians who fled, in fear or otherwise, are allowed to return to what is now Israel, it will only set the stage for a revenge campaign against anyone who happens to be Jewish or Zionist. There will then be NO freedom, NO democracy . . . . . for Jews OR Arabs. There will, inevitably, be a declaration of ANOTHER "Islamic Republic", some form of Shari'a Law, and the total destruction of ANY sanctuary, refuge or homeland for the Jews in the territory of what is now Israel/Palestine. Any hope for true equality and tolerance under Muslim domination is naive in the extreme.

The Israeli argument is that somehow future events (which have not happened, and may not happen) justify the present occupation and humiliation of the Palestinians. At least that is what I understand from your post.

Perhaps we should apply this same lesson to African Americans, and lock them in cages because they are a threat to white society and cannot concievably live peacefully with whites.

Or perhaps we should apply this lesson to Iraq, because we all now that if we leave the animals will descend into chaos.

All future Jewish deaths attributable to the equitable treatment of Palestinians are suppositional. Current bloodshed attributable to the inequities of life in Israel/Palestine are an indisputable fact.

Myself I prefer the now defunct American model, which says that all men are created equally and endowed with the same inalienable rights, regardless of their ethnic background or precieved religious land-grants.

I just want to make it understood that my comments about Iraq and African Americans were sarcastic.