first...Israel was gradually reducing its borders the last 10 years, as I understood it. They withdrew from Lebanon, from Gaza, destroyed settlements (with great complaints from settlers)...What am I missing here?

You clearly know very little about the nature and the scope of the occupation, Bill. Israel withdrew from Gaza, but kept a stranglehold on Gaza's borders, air space, and shores, and in the process, on Gaza's economic viability. It has been bombing civilians in Gaza on a quite regular basis, for many years. It did not stop these bombings of civilians after it withdrew from Gaza.

Israel withdrew from Gaza but it is still occupying the West Bank, and it will not end the occupation there even after it dismantles a few, very small, token settlements there. It will hold on to the largest and the most intrusive aparthied settlements there, as well as confiscating for its own use, the vast majority of the West Bank's water resources.

The result of this will be that the Palestinians of the West Bank will not be able to move freely within the West Bank, but they will be held like prisoners in tiny bantustans (some people call them ghettoes), separated one from another, and separated from their orchards, fields, and their livelihoods, and with very little access to water, subjected to arbitrary checkpoints within the West Bank, subjected to being at best, humiliated and at worst, killed at the whim of Israeli soldiers (this is documented by members and former members of the IDF), and denied all of the basic human rights that we in the US say we, as a country, stand for.

Israel has not slowed down the process of disposessing many thousands of Palestinians from their homes (buldozing them into dust), but has sped up the process instead, and has sped up the process of building new settlements and increasing the size of already existing ones.

The Palestinians will continue to live with no legal protections, no civil rights, no human rights... no rights whatever. If you think anyone has a right to do this to an entire civilian population consisting of more than a million people, then you are a bigot and a racist as well.

second...that sentence sounds like a propaganda message written by a Palestinian. I have heard ministers for Syria and Quatar say stuff like that today. "brutal and totalitarian" are value judgements...are you really qualified to pass this judgment?

I'm as qualified to pass judgement on the Israeli occupation as I was to pass judgement on Jim Crow in the US south, Apartheid in South Africa, and on the Nazis for their crimes against humanity. If you think that standing up for human rights is propaganda, then you are hardly the humanitarian I had taken you to be. You need to learn a hell of a lot more than you currently do about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands before you will be in a position to tell me what I am saying is propaganda.

"acts of agression"?? What IS the difference between that and "responses to provocation"? Weren't the suicide bus bombings in Israel 'acts of agression'?

Suicide bombings are always a response to occupation, regardless of who commmits them. So therefore, they are always a response to provocation. Nobody has a right to subjugate another people. I condemn suicide bombing as a tactic because it targets civilians. But the occupation is the catalyst for this behavior. This is true everywhere in the world where foriegn governments subject civilian populations to military occupation.