Guardian covered this today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/30/hamas-reprisal-attacks

Not only can the Palestinian Arabs not share a country with the Jews - they can't even manage to share it with one another, which sort of kills stone-dead the following aspirations:

- One State Solution
- Two State Solution

Maybe there should be a Three State Solution proposed with:

- Israel
- West Bank
- Gaza

If things continue as they are then Israel and West Bank will eventually iron out all their points of difference and rub along quite peacefully and a sort of mutual prosperity will evolve. Gaza on the other hand under the guiding hand of Hamas will remain the basket case it has been since 2005 and be reduced to a sort of live firing range and weapons testing ground, which would be no great change it's what Hamas have used it for from Day One.

"tit-for-tat arguments are far more at home in the schoolyard than in the adult world." - Jim Carroll

"The main question surely is, should any country have the right to invade, and occupy a country and ghettoise, terrorise, humiliate and oppress the people of that country - especially when this behaviour is based on a two thousand year old myth." - Jim Carroll

I would certainly like to hear from the Government of any nation on this earth who would stand by mute and inactive for seven years and submit to a barrage of over 8000 rockets and mortar bombs fired deliberately at centres of civilian opulation under their protection. Quite right Jim these tit-for-tat arguements go way beyond those of the school playground.

I do not know what two thousand year old myth Jim is referring to as for the first part of that quote from his post I note that he confers the status of nation upon Gaza. This is good because it does put things into a clearer perspective. When one country attacks another then the country that has been attacked has every right to protect itself and if that requires invasion, occupation and forcibly disarming your enemy and degrading their ability to further wage war then that is exactly what you do.

This I though was worth a good chuckle:

"We have found out to our cost here in Ireland over the last three decades that, no matter what your point of view on nationalism, while one country persists on occupying another, the outcome is inevitably vicious and bloody."

What country persisted in occupying what country Jim?? Northern Ireland is and always has been part of the United Kingdom. The people of Northern Ireland voted it that way, because they did not want to be part of an independent Ireland. The only reason the people of Northern Ireland experienced an outcome that was "vicious and bloody" was because a crowd of complete and utter eejits took it upon themselves to try and impose their will on the people of Northern Ireland by force. They certainly had no mandate to unify Ireland in the manner they chose by the population of either Northern Ireland or Eire, that was abundantly clear to the PIRA in the all Ireland Referendum held at the same time as the one for the GFA where 94% voted to renounce Eire's Constitutional claim to Northern Ireland and declared that violence has no part in politics in Ireland.