I admire and strongly advocate your proposal! Israel: Stop murdering Palestinians, stealing their land, controlling their lives, and making them live in walled ghettoes!

They're bound to send some repugnant stuff as usual.

It's exactly because of ideas like these this conflict is never-ending. The main goal of this idea, the highest achievement possible, is a ceasefire, or a temporary calm. Although, this theoretically would bring an end to bloodshed in the short-run, all it takes is a little foreign affairs slip, or even a small internal matter, and boom, we're back to square one. This is the useless strategy of "situation management" that Israel has been using since '93. It doesn't focus on winning the war, and we are at war, but only focuses on making small gains in various areas of the conflict. This strategy will never get us anywhere. We must "change disks" and rethink our strategy. Only by winning the war, we will achieve long-lasting and durable peace. We must cause the other side to admit defeat, or in this case, we must force the Palestinians to recognize Israel's right to exist in permanent security and prosperity.

Without an overture of peace from the Palestinians Israel will always be at war with them. The Israeli government ignores this at its peril!

I have ready many of your talk backs, and do get the gist of your messages. However, to be honest your posts are often irrelevant to the articles, I think we would all appriciate it if you stuck to the topic inhand instead of going off on you tangent as usual - Thank you for your time.

The experiment in Gaza is finito, Kaput, dead. The restraints placed upon the IDF makes victory impossible. The IDF must be allowed to stop all shipments of weapons and bomb making material into Gaza, particualarly from Egypt. Egypt must agree to deploy troops every five feet on the border to stop above ground smuggling and to punish the smugglers and Egyptians who cooperate. In short the solutions offered in this article is a recipe for defeat of Israel. The article from start to finish is rubbage.

"I have not yet heard even one proposal from these critics that would prevent bloodshed – of Palestinians and Israelis alike." Please, dear Co-Co-CEO-Co, read Hanegbi solution. Rantissi and Yassin solution to Hnania will do wonders. Since you don't hear well, read diZ Co-Co-Co-CEO "Yassin and Rantisi are waiting for you, Haniyeh, if you implemet the same stance of liquidating Jews, indiscriminate firing, and suicide terror attacks aimed at paralyzing Israeli society anew," said Hanegbi, chairman of the influential Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=725849 Another solution is to outlaw the flow of money from Europe to extreme left-wing organizations like yourself...

is very confusing. I seem to recall a long time ago in school I was taught the meaning of the word bilateral.

Miky?Steiner?Did you change you"r sex?

Every single agreement to a ceasefire has been violated by the Pals. EVERY SINGLE ONE! What kind of imbecile says now we need another ceasefire. Lincoln said, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. When are the Israelis going to learn the Pals/Arabs can't be trusted to keep any agreement?

Hamas needs a "ceasefire" so that they can regroup, rearm, and plan more attacks.

Israel is not in charge of preserving Arab settlers lives. Those in charge, Hamas, Fatah, ... doesn't care about that and obviously most Fakestinians doesn't care as well since they use to vote for jihadists or terrorist like Arafat but they never voted for moderates and are not likely to vote for them in the near future.

believing in hudna, shmudnas. What a joke!! SO WHAT if Hamas "claimed" they had a "cease-fire." Are you that naive to believe they weren't funding the other million terrorist groups behind the scenes? DR Basking? Will they give anyone a PHD these days?

What do you call a calm--a day or two when all of the bombers have been intercepted and have not been able to kill wholesale. What are all those qassam? soap bubbles? You want a cease fire from one side only? After all Hamas can say not me? We can;t control those Fatah members and Abbas can turn around and say--not me must be AlAksa marters. We can't control all of them . No cease fire until you are eaither all dead or you turn in all your arms and say ok Israel you win you have the right to live

1."Stop murdering Palestinians" if they didnt used them as shields they wouldnt have gotten killed 2."stealing their land" their giving it back despite that but its not good enough for hamas beacuse he wants all of it and hamas is threaten to kill them 3."controlling their lives" you mean the laws that make it so that no one gets killed? 4."and making them live in walled ghettoes" so your blamming everything on somthing that their government controls on?

We must show restraint in the coming weeks/months... especially after the mistake on the Gaza beachfront. IF the Palestinians would actually start using their brains for once and really stop the Kassams we must not fire anything at them...Maybe everyone will calm down a bit and realize that a cease-fire doesn't neccesarily have to be temporary. Of course it is VERY hard for me to believe that Haniyeh and his gang will stop all terrorist activities and that not one Kassam will fall but.... as long as they are quiet - we should keep that quiet... Then when they start up again it will be even more obvious to the world who are the provacatuers...

The use of force so far has not solved the problem. The solution tho isn't to stop using force but rather to use maximal force. I propose the following motto: Peace thru overwhelming fire power!

Would it really be enough to limit the participation on such a Ceasefire Monitoring Committee to officials from the USA and Egypt? Haven’t we tried this combination many times before in various situations relating to the Israel/Palestine conflict and haven’t we found that although there has been a continued determining spirit on their parts to introduce and invite a commitment to the abandonment of armed struggle notwithstanding this the armed struggle has continued !? As attitudes stand today even the establishment of a fully autonomous and independent State of Palestine would not seem to portend an inspiration for change to intellectual struggle. It is obvious to most observers of the conflict that something radically new is required in order to win the hearts and minds of the people who choose armed struggle. I suggest it is the world they are living in that has to change and this has to begin extra-terrestrially. By this I mean it has to happen in the mind. This can happen with proper education in Palestinian schools but for adult human beings there is only one way this can happen and this means the Mass Media. Television and Radio are extra-terrestrial realms of human existence. We inhabit them in our conscious and with and by them we develop conscience and social psychological instincts. We have too many warriors in Israel and Palestine and not enough peace makers. The Mass Media must be invited by the governments of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the United States of America to invest more quality time and broadcasting pragmatism in the transmission of sustainable ideology to the people of the region. The United Nations Declaration on a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence and its Programme of Action is just one international statement of ideology that can be used and that should be widely publicized to the people there. If the television companies would devote just as much time to advertising and publicizing such idealism as this as they devote to commercial breaks or soap dramas or sporting highlight repeats we could all make, and most fundamentally important of all share some real intellectual progress. How much of the violence we suffer or inflict happens in virtue of the fact of our inabilities to articulate an intellectual response to our struggles? We must explore this question. A Ceasefire Monitoring Committee would be something to build upon but since wars begin in the mind it is in the mind that the social psychological architecture of peace and harmony must be constructed. To change this world you need to begin with some imagination for a better world. Leaders come and go with elections and with events but the people remain. How long shall they remain oblivious of the higher ideals of this world? How long will our governments err in calling television and radio corporations to work to bring higher ideology to warring peoples? How much does it cost to make a news bulletin that reports on a terrorist act? How much is the opportunity cost of not focussing on the transmission of more altruistic definitions of ideology and social praxis? All the people are a monitoring committee. What are they monitoring these days?

Dr. Gershon Baskin’s proposal is flawed by his ignoring a major root cause of this ongoing seemingly never ending cycle of violence which is, the emotion of unbridled Hate. A person consumed by a passionate strong sense of hate is, unable to see, function, reason, or compromise away his emotional feeling until he is either successful or surrenders to reality that his incapability to ever achieve his goal of destroying the underlying reason of hatred. The introducing of outside monitors to report on any violation of the peace has been tried time and time again all to no avail. Can Dr. Baskin explain just why, Saudi Arabia, Oman, The Arab Emirates, Yemen, Libya, Iran, Kuwait, Pakistan and the list goes on and on which includes practically all, and I mean all, Moslem countries intractable unflinching hatred towards Israel, just what acts of war or any acts of terror has Israel ever done to them, to warrant such hate. Just what territory did Israel “Occupy” prior to 1967 that warranted a global demand by the Islamic countries to impose a total isolation and embargo against Israel, just what acts of oppression was Israel guilty of that warranted a continual Islamic supported onslaught of the Fadieen, the precursor to the PLO, against the Israeli civilian population. If their hate is caused by their considering the Palestinians as brothers why and just why did they make it a policy to keep them downtrodden and totally dependant upon the good graces of the western community and refuse their Brothers to become citizens of their host countries, I will insert quotes from a well known reporter for CNN Ms. Christiane Amanpour, who herself was a refugee from Iran In her observation of the current state of the worlds refugees she acknowledges that, the so called world agencies created to provide a measure of civility in the world is a total failure by failing to protect as per their mandate, “I found myself covering the Iraqi Kurds -- nearly 2 million of them, according to U.N. officials -- who fled to neighboring Turkey and Iran and became refugees.” And further writes about, The Balkan revolving-refugee crisis, ethnic cleansing and genocide that consumed the 1990s, The Kosovar refugees would tug at our heartstrings as they fled Slobodan Milosevic's murderous campaign. Perhaps the most shocking experience was in Rwanda in 1994. In the space of three short but brutal months, Hutu extremists launched a highly organized campaign to wipe out the country's Tutsis and moderate Hutu population And then she makes the following observation, After this, you think nothing will shock you again, but it does. The crisis in Darfur in Sudan is appalling and getting worse. A Sudanese government-backed Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, has kept up a reign of terror in the Western region of Darfur, the United Nations says, slashing, burning, killing and raping the indigenous African tribal people. Three years after this war began, it says, nearly 2 million people are crowded into camps where health and food crises are rampant. These are people who have fled their homes, but are officially known as "internally displaced persons," or IDPs. About 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is, in fact, caring for more people -- some 21 million, mostly because of the world's internally displaced, such as in Sudan Ms Amanpour admits that the Palestinian issue is, And then there are the perpetual political refugees, such as the Palestinians. …. They have been in camps for so long, the UNHCR does not even include them in their overall figures.

In light of these realities, I must disagree with Dr. Baskin notion that the violence between Israel and the Islamic supported terrorists can be resolved by any reasonable reasoning with the antagonists or in showing a resolve to make peace by introducing peaceful gestures. There are some issues that I am sorry to say and is supported by actual historical facts, not by perverting history to fit your notions of what should of happened, to quote a phrase used extensively during WW2 and embodied by the Teheran conference between President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Stalin, wherein it was agreed that to cease hostilities it would require a total capitulation of the Axis Powers, nothing less will be accepted.

Dr. BASKIN is brillant, and if morons such as yourself cannot see this you should stop responding to someone who has spent his life in his field of endeavor.

was seasfire? Did you last your memory or spent last 8 month in Sweded with no TV? Are you forgot, that some groups, like Islamic Jahad never accepted seasfire and sent bombers and Hamas made Kassams to Israel? Sure, you can call all of this right wing lies.