BillD,

that's not a reasonable solution. It would make the Jews a tiny opressed minority in any state that would replace the current set-up. I think you know this.

Bobert, your theory of why the Arab countries would not "get in the middle" of the "Israeli-Palestinian" issue has two major flaws. One, we know by now that Israel could not use nuclear weapons against their neighboring Arab states because it would render much of Israel uninhabitable. Two, the Arab states did nothing to help the Palestinians, and indeed kept and in some cases forced the Palestinians out of trans-Jordan, Syria and other countries BEFORE Israel had any nuclear capability.

CarolC, most people simply do not agree with your interpretation of Oslo. You point out one obligation the Israelis did not meet and one obligation the Palestinians did meet. But there was much more to Oslo than this.

You make it sound like all the Palestinians have to do is not kill anyone and they're in compliance. In fact, there were many things that the Palestinian authority was supposed to do from the very outset of Oslo that they never did, for example, amending the Palestinian Covenant to stop it from calling for Israel's destruction. That's pretty basic, wouldn't you say? In fact, the Palestinians violated more basic tenets of Oslo than the Israelis did, according to both Jewish and Christian groups.

It may be that they refrained from murder for two whole years. (What prize do you suggest we give them?) What they did not do was refrain from calling for the elimination of Israel, while at the same time claiming hypocritically that they "recognized Israel's right to exist."

It's like saying "I recognize Jim's right to live, but he annoys me so I'll still call for his assassination!"

Israel did in fact cede territory and authority. They recognized the Palestinian Authority, released terrorist prisoners, granted amnesty to terrorists at large (we're talking about thousands of prisoners released and amnesty cases).

In some cases, you are right, settlements went on and even accelerated. But in light of the non-amendment of the Covenant, Israel did not see that they had to go out of their way to prevent settlements. So they met some obligations and not others, just like the Palestinians.

Then there's the question of what Oslo was meant to achieve. Faisal Husseini, the former PLO leader in Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority member, admitted that Oslo was:

"a Trojan Horse . . . just a temporary procedure . . . just a step towards something bigger: Palestine from the river to the sea," i.e., from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, eradicating Israel. According to Husseini, Oslo was a method of "ambushing the Israelis and cheating them."

They succeeded, because now more people (like you) are convinced that Israel is to blame.