Jacko, there you go again with your distorted facts, suppositions and plain old lies. "If land is stolen or illegally purchased, however, it doesn’t matter what you do to it or how you improve it, it’s simply not right." The land was not stolen or illegally purchased but of course it suits your propaganda to refer to it as such which is what infuriates me. With regard to the settlements in the West Bank, that's a different issue but of course it suits you and the palestinian propaganda machine to blur any distinction between the two separate points and therefore imply that most of the land that constitutes Israel today was usurped from the previous inhabitants.
The rest of that paragraph you wrote about the murder of thousands and ethnic cleansing is just a lie and typical of the misinformation that is put about by the apologists for the suicide murderers and their claims that the murder of innocent civilians is only a backlash because of that. You know very well that the majority of the Arab population were ordered out by the Egyptians, Iraqis and Jordanians with the promise that they would be allowed back and even more, allowed to take over the land that would be freed after they had beaten the Jews into the sea. Well, history took a different turn and like an idiot who doesn't learn that banging your head against a wall doesn't get you anywhere the Arabs have continued to try and push the Jews into the sea. It was Sadat who was the visionary and look who killed him.
Also, your next paragraph includes this piece of horse manure "Egypt was desperate for peace and disillusioned with war, and it gave you an Arab ally without having to make important concessions and without having to risk Israel's fundamental security. By comparison, peace with the Palestinians would require hard compromises and difficult concessions, and would require a huge leap of faith and of imagination." which only goes to show you up as being of limited intelligence and even less logic. Are you therefore saying that the Palestinians are NOT desperate for peace? Well, we all know that their leader certainly isn't but as you and many others repeatedly state, and I have no doubt about this, most ordinary Palestinians pretty much want peace too. Your rubbish about "no risk" to Israels fundamental security also proves to me that you are a propagandist for the murdering b@stards who use suicide bombing as an excuse for being oppressed. The Sinai was a massive security buffer for Israel. I regularly fly into Taba in Egypt, right on the southernmost border with Israel and you only have to look right as you take off out of there and climb out to the northwest to see how small Israel really is. Long before reaching intermediate cruise you can see every major city in Israel. Considering that Egypt had always threatened to destroy Israel until Sadat realised that there was an alternative, I think the Israelis had some tough decisions to make regarding their security. I was actually there at the time Sadat arrived in Israel and i can tell you that it was an uplifting day and declared a national holiday with huge amounts of rejoicing in the streets just because of the thought that peace might actually be a possibility. Your attempt at distorting as though Egypt was desperate and Israel wasn't is just more proof that you have an agenda to distort facts.
The Palestinians want peace but their leadership is just not up to the job. Their double dealing and corruption together with the their incessant indoctrination of hate and martyrdom to their population from birth means that they have made it much more difficult to deal with by the Israelis. I agree that they have got the ****ty end of the stick and something needs to be done for the ordinary Palestinians. Unfortunately, much of their predicament is their own or their supporters doing. Until 1967 they were 'occupied' by Jordan in the West Bank and Egypt in Gaza but I don't hear much complaint about that. With Egypt blockading Israel in the Straits of Tiran, ordering the UN buffer force out of Sinai and Nasser claiming that he was going to destroy Israel once and for all, Israel pre-empted that and gave themselves a buffer zone to the south. They also warned the Jordanians to stay out of the conflict but were attacked anyway so they gained a buffer zone to the east. The Palestinians just went from being stateless with Jordanian or Egyptian ID papers to being stateless under the occupation of Israel. The biggest problems for them began after Arafat was allowed back to the country and he decided that after scuppering the peace negotiations he would go back to his preferred method of dealing with Israel, terrorism. That is what has brought the problems that the ordinary Palestinians suffer today.
With regard to the 'wall' or 'fence' as some like to refer to it, there was a fence there up until 1967. The new fence follows mainly the original border except in a few places where it is strategically necessary to change for security reasons. The total amount of former Jordanian land ending up on the Israeli side is less than 1% of the area of the West Bank. Also, the fence is the same as the border fence along Israels northern borders. It is a useful security apparatus and is designed to keep intruders out. Of course it suits the propagandists to turn it into a 'Berlin Wall' but even after a peace agreement there would be a need for a security fence, just as there is along the border with all Israels neighbours, even Egypt after their peace agreement.
Jacko, if you would only stop your double standards, we could continue to debate sensibly. Your continuous need to retort to Bubbette only contributes even more to thread drift. Try ignoring her. I do. Unfortunately, by distorting facts you only serve to continue the cycle of anger. Your post above is another classic example. "The Arab side has moved on and doesn't want or expect most of it back. All they want back is those areas which were captured (read stolen) in 1967." They were not 'stolen'. They were occupied during an armed conflict with the Jordanians and the Egyptians. Israel has always stated that it would be willing to return that land in exchange for peace and the UN resolution bandied about so much, 242, also states that Israel is not obliged to return that land unless a negotiated settlement can be agreed on.
I agree that giving Israel some of the blame for the Palestinians plight is fair but your analysis is again a gross distortion. If Arafat had not instigated the intifada and called for suicide martyrs then the Israelis wouldn't be in all their towns and blockading him. Until the intifada, the Palestinians had more rights and freedom than ever before in their history and that was even before the negotiations had reached their conclusions. It was Arafat who allowed the terrorists freedom of movement to attack Israel from within his PA areas. Until then there was massive trade and movement of labour between the two peoples. I will assume that Abu Ala's threat to resign just one day after being sworn in as PM due to Arafats meddling and underhand attempts to destroy any semblance of a peace process will be conveniently ignored or more likely turned around into some Israeli secret conspiracy?