The problems that so many Palestinians have with Israel is that if Hammas did not keep on bombing innocent Israeli citizens, then the rest of the Palestinian people would not have such a hard time of it.

I disagree with this. I think a case can be made that if Hamas wasn't in the area attempting to defend Palestinians, and provide them with much needed basic human services, all of the Palestinians would have already died or have been removed from the occupied territories. I can't prove the situation either way, but then again, neither can you.

Let's be honest all journalists & political writers have their own agenda,& are quite happy to bend the truth to sell their articles.

Some more than others, I think. But that's why I try to get my information from Jewish human rights organizations whenever possible.

'From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements.'

Are you therefore CarolC condoning this fact? These were still human beings being killed.

This presents quite a problem, doesn't it? These were human beings who were harrassing and killing innocent human beings and driving them from their homes. If I was in a position to have to defend one or the other of these groups, I'd have a hard time justifying defending the aggressor in this situation.

And how about the human beings that the IDF forces were (and are) harassing and killing? Do you condone this killing? They are still human beings. And how about the people who are killed in the name of fighting terrorism? They are human beings too. Do you condone killing them?

"Israel entered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli legal experts traditionally resisted efforts to define the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "occupied" or falling under the main international treaties dealing with military occupation. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign." In fact, prior to 1967, Jordan had occupied the West Bank and Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip; their presence in those territories was the result of their illegal invasion in 1948. Jordan's 1950 annexation of the West Bank was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan and rejected by the vast majority of the international community, including the Arab states."

So who was occupying whom?

Your legal experts don't have a leg to stand on. The land that was given to the Jewish State of Israel was given to them by the same body that gave Palestine to the Palestinians. If the Palestinians have no claim to their land, then neither do the Israelis.

And this kind of legalese jargon is a pretty pathetic attempt to justify something that no self-respecting Jew would tolerate if it was foisted upon them by anyone. The Jews who were expelled from their homes in Pogroms in places like Russia. They weren't legitimate sovereigns over their land. Does that make the expulsion ok? The countries whose governments oppressed Jews Were/are sovereigns. Does that make it ok for them to oppress Jews?

Even the Palestinians who live in Israel proper are treated as second class citizens. I can provide plenty of non-journalistic documentation to suppor this statement. Israel has no constitution, and it has two sets of laws. One set of laws applies only to Jews. The other set of laws applies to everyone else.

The Palestinians in the occupied territories have no rights at all. They are non-people to the Israeli government.

And would you now evict all those people who have made their homes in these areas? Where are they supposed to go. You will now make thousands of people homeless. So what do you do about that situation?

Yes. The settlers need to go. The settlements are in violation of the Geneva Convention, and they are the cause of a lot of violence and suffering for a lot of people on both sides. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to provide money to the settlers to relocate elsewhere, just as there were plenty of people who provided the money for them to settle in the occupied territories in the first place.

That is, of course, unless people decided to have all of Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories be joined together as one country under a secular government with one constitution for everybody and only one set of laws for everybody. I don't see this being very likely.

So since you like to frame arguments in terms of equivalences, ask yourself this... if a government of a country, right now, was doing to Jews what the government of Israel has been and continues to do to the Palestinians, would you tolerate it? Would you be silent while it happened? Would you support them and help them do it with your words, your money, your political support?

If I was silent while governments did these kinds of things to Jews, my silence would make me complicit. So what about you? Are you willing to make yourself complicit while these things are being done to human beings? Being done in your name?