CarolC's model - "I should be able to come to your house and, at the point of a gun, force you to let me live in the entire house except for one of the closets"

Not quite representative is it CarolC.

Now let's see in this totally inaccurate representation CarolC is playing the part of the big bad Zionist Jews, who come into I suppose BeardedBruce's (or the "Palestinians" - Arab, Christian and Jew) house and take it over.

But of course it was never BB's house in the first place was it CarolC? BB was like a sort of tennent, the person who owned the house lock stock and barrel was guy called Otto Man, in fact he'd owned it for ages (centuries in fact). Now Otto was the one who decided who could moved in and whether or not the could own any part of the place. He most certainly was not stupid enough to let the likes of CarolC into the house with guns.

From the 1870's he'd been allowing the likes of CarolC in from outside and selling them all sorts of useless land, which they used to work their arses off to make into things like citrus orchards, or almond and olive groves. Otto Man liked all that because it improved his property and made him loads of money.

Unfortunately Otto had a gambling problem and he lost the house and the new owners assigned somebody to look after it. Of course some of the sitting tennents tried to play the situation for their own advantage and the new owners decided the best way to proceed would be to split the property as much as they could along factional lines. So the house became semi-detatched sort of one house being 75% of the total called "Transjordan" and the other smaller 25% section being called "Palestine" which had been the original name of the whole property.

CarolC still invited people to come and stay, which was OK with the new owners, in fact it had been one of the conditions of transfer of the property from the previous owner. When the Casino (Known as the League of Nations) had agreed to accept Palestine in payment for Otto Man's gambling debt, they insisted that CarolC be allowed to invite in her friends to stay as long as they didn't upset the other residents namely BB most of whose friends now lived in the "Transjordan" part of the house (BB could live in that part of the house but CarolC could not - them was the rules).

BB feels a bit insecure so attempts to get CarolC's arrangement regarding bringing people in cancelled. To do this BB tells all his faction living in the house that CarolC and her lot have been attacking them. If this is believed and there is trouble then just to create peace in the house CarolC will get the heave.

BB fires everybody on his side up, of course they believe him but fail to do a head count otherwise they would have realised that none of them have been killed. They just take his word for it and wade in killing CarolC's pals, try their best to drive them out, robbing them and destroying their bits and pieces.

This sort of continues for about twenty years until the new landlords decide that enough is enough we'll sub-divide "Palestine" into a bit for CarolC and a bit for BB. CarolC is prepared to accept this solution (not surprising as she's been on the receiving end for damn near twenty years). Not good enough says BB we wnat more and we don't want CarolC bringing in any more friends. Damn all to do with you what she does with her bit once the property's divided says the Landlord.

Well as they can't agree there's a ruck and BB's old mates in the other part of the house (Transjordan) see an opportunity to take over BB's bit of "Palestine". However in the ensuing game of poker CarolC sees off the bluff and wins but is more or less prepared to settle for the original split.

BB is still not happy........

Now that is a bit more representative of what happened CarolC, nothing about people coming into a strangers house threatening them at point of gun. Nothing about pushing people into closets.

If you chose to gamble on fighting a war then be prepared to take the consequences when you lose - Exactly as the "Palestinians" did in 1947, 1956, 1967 and 1973.