The Israeli Palestinian conflict

[TaiDaishar]

Your post was of high quality Medicine_Man, and as such I'll do my best to equal it with my reply.

The Israeli solution to this was to displace the Arab population and reduce them to second class citizens

This is one of the legends that appear to stick, even within my own country some people think Israel did throw the Arabs out, why the Arabs fled Israel are because of other reasons.

For starters, there was war, right when Israel declared it's independence the Arab League simutanouasly(sp?) attacked the Jews in Israel, granted that war creates refugees who're wishing to stay out of harm's way, although, another thing that drove the arabs out of Israel was the constant preachings of the Arab leaders telling them to run away before the Israelis will come and rape their wives and take their homes and they will return when the Arab League shall come out victorious, as we all know, this did not happen, and the refugees had to resettle in refugee camps due to the unwillingness of any country (except Jordan) to accept them into their territories although most of the countries could easily accept them.

Maybe Israel DID evacuate Palestinians but it was a small minority, a very small one and guess what more, the Israeli arabs who did stay (now why didn't Israel throw them out as well...?) are full Israeli citizens (even those who were found guilty in terrorist attempts) and as an Israeli have full rights while I didn't hear any other Arab refugee getting any sort of rights from their country.

The Palestinians have two clear issues: The loss of their homeland and the oppression they suffer at the hands of the Israelis.

Techincally speaking, the Palestinians never had a homeland, Israel never belonged to the Palestinians and the Palestinians never wanted it to belong to them (until recently) practically though, the areas which Israel originally recieved were almost entirely voided of any Arab settlments or arab settlers, in the wars to come, Israel captured a lot of territories and has increased it's territories greatly, by right, the land Israel captured IS Israel's territory now and the Palestinians' demands they will return their land back is empty since they are no longer the Palestinians' areas (and never were by the way, it was all captured from the countries of the Arab League).

Now I'm going to remind you of some recent history, the time in which Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians 95% of the territories the Palestinians demanded as well as a portion of Jerusalam to be handed to Palestinian authorities, the offer was rejected and to add to the irony and the insult, they opened a Jihad against us using women, men and children as ticking bombs who are told will go to heaven if they kill jews in their suicide (remember they are highly religious than any europian country and heaven means a lot to them), call me crazy but I don't see how these acts relate to the Palestinians' wish to get their homeland...

Now I move to the oppression, one thing that clearly slipped a lot of memories is that before the intifada the "oppression" was hardly existant if it existed at all, the Palestinians started the intifada when Arial Sharon entered Har HaBait in order to visit the holiest jewish site, when Israeli forces entered the cities which by the way happened a long time AFTER the start of the intifada, the Palestinians now say they're fighting against the Israeli oppression which started only because of the need of the Israelis to be able to enter a bus without it exploding because of some fanatical idiot.

There is a magical circle involving this oppression, the Palestinians fight because of the "oppression" and the oppression exist because the Palestinians fight, there is a few problems to this magical circle, once and time again Israel tried to remove one of the components to this circle (the "oppression") and removed their forces from the majority of places yet (and this is the real magic about this circle) the Palestinians attacked with a suicide bomber or a terrorist attack against nearby Jewish settlments almost immediately after the IDF removed their forces from the areas.

You also must remember that the stories in the media about soldier X doing a Y bad thing to Z Palestinian are a very very very very small minority in Israel they are also judged and feel the full power of the law of Israel like they were judged of hurting another Israeli.

I'm not gonna even mention the half truth told in some of those stories, a good example for a half truth in the media was the story about an Israeli soldier forcing a Palestinian to drink sulfur acid, the true story was that the Israeli soldier forced the palestinian to drink only because she said it was water and it was standart procedure to make them drink a thing they say is good for drinking.

Only a small number of these organizations are "terrorist"

Maybe small in numbers but the Hamas, Fetah and all the rest of these terrorist organizations are the most popular organizations in through the Palestinians, as for the PLO, last time I checked it was a terrorist organization in the lead of Arafat (GASP, Arafat is a terrorist?) that simply disappeared slowly and for other organizations, why me, you or anyone else have yet to hear about an organization rallying for peace? I remember there was a very small group like that once (3-12 months ago) but after the 2 days they disappeared as if the earth opened it's mouth and swallowed them whole (Or more likely, Arafat's mouth opened).

that every Arab is suspect in the minds of the Israelis

And sadly, every Israeli is guilty in the minds of the Arabs.

To lend my post some credibility, I should fish up some figures on how many Palestinians are currently imprisioned and how many have perished in custody

But you didn't give any figures and you didn't give anything so it's not a matter to discuss, I would also like to mention that those who were taken prisoners in a gun fight etc' and died during their hospital treatment are also considered prisoners who died in custody.

First: if you are a Palestinian living in the Levant, you are living in one of the world's most squalid hellholes. Many of these Palestinian communities have just about the highest population density per square kilometer in the world because of forced relocation to camps. The worst parts of Palestine are nearly devoid of proper utilities and medical treatment. I'm sure there are worse places in the world to live, but I'd bet that Palestinians are living in the bottom 5% of the world's lucky urban dwellers.

Not only that this is mostly speculative and pretty much false the Israelis can easily make their "most squalid hellholes" into a place worse than hell by simply refusing to give them electricity and/or water services (yep, those services are granted to the Palestinians by the Israelis), of course, Israel won't do it because it's immoral and simply not right.

Considering the whole situation, I'd say that my sympathies lay mostly with those Palestinians who are not bombing, shooting or killing Jews -- and I'm sure the majority are not terrorists.

They have my sympathy as well, if you could find a Palestinian who truly do not support terrorism, he has my sympathy (I'm not saying they're non existant, simply that if they exist, Arafat is keeping them on a short leash).

You don't want Palestinians to accept they're the aggressors (and, thus, immoral). You just want the rest of the world to accept how immoral they are?

I have given up all hope of the Palestinians stopping their ways, I do have (little) hope in that the world's nations could put enough pressure on the Palestinians to stop.