Because this is the hell that you made it but you have no shame. You need live as an oppressed person along with your family, your children if you have any, with all your rights and theirs trampled into the earth. May all oppressed people no matter where and no matter who rise up against countries like yousf. The worst part with Israel is that it pretends to be a model, humane and democratic society like someone wearing a mask as a disguise as it grotesquely carries out crime after crime after crime against humanity, or in reality, to say, that for Israel, humanity consists of Jews only.

"The only resolution Israel recognizes..." Hmm, Israel accepted UNSCR242 and the Arabs loudly decried it and said they'd never accept it. Israel agreed to multiple resolutions on Lebanon, but the Arabs have rejected them. There are only on UNSC resolution Israel's rejected: That we shouldn't have had a parade when we liberated Jerusalem. Yes, that's the length the UN goes to to excoriate Israel -- complaining about a parade. Meanwhile, the Arabs continue to reject all resolutions aimed at peace, as well as armistices they've signed, Oslo, Camp David, the Road Map and more. That Lois complains and ignores reality is proof that she's an antisemite opposed to giving Israel an equal place, or any place, among nations.

when did the Palestinians accept a two state solution? if they did, I missed it. Seems to me that at Camp David, that solution was rejected. In fact as long as there is a demand for the return of "refugees" in quotes because the Palestinians are the only group that has a special definition all their own, the reality is that there will be no Israel.

80% of palestinian arabs convert to judaism... No problem anymore :-)

Please G-d let there be peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Let us create here in the Land of Israel a model state where the Torah commandment of "love your neighbour as your self" will enlighten the world. Let us all realize the Torah teaching that "we are all created in the image of G-d." We are all G-d's children. Let the evil leaders and hate vendors among us disappear from the world. Amen and Amen.

Thanks Mr. Hanania, but you failed to mention that Israel is still unwilling to recognize the Palestinains rights in reality and not in their " happy talk" Palestinians face daily degredation and racism at the hands of Israel. how does the Israeli people suffer! ohh maybe they cannot sit quietly watching TV in their lush house built on stolen Palestinean land?

Add me to your list please, i am on it. This is the only solution to exit this terrible situation.

i suppose Mr.Hanania wrote this article in full despair, this is why it might be pardonable. however, the reality is simple, one cannot have peace with extremists which have as a first goal to kill you. the pal.people have chosen their horrible government as the iranians did and, in earlier times, the germans did. i am convinced Israel would be the first to make peace, but in the actual situation it would be complete blindness to try. the evil roots have to be extinguished first. for the sake of a better life for all. but the evil manipulations have so far evolved in the heads of the people. it is too late.

"For some Israelis, the 1967 War and the occupation implanted the belief that they could expand their nation into new lands through settlements." Ray, you seem to have forgotten that Israel lost the so called west bank and the people who had lived there for decades were 'ethnically cleansed to be free of Jews. After '67 they merely started to rebuild after returning 'home' . Balil, education in Yorkshire must indeed have gone down hill since my school days if you think that the 'partition plan' gave the largest share to Israel, learn history and learn how England divided the land long before that, illegally I may add, against the terms of the LON and UN commitments to uphold the LON policies. Some of us are old in the teeth and can actually remember history before revisionists came along.

Ray, I really like your article on peace ... with one minor exception, your conclusion where you write "let's FIGHT for peace." THAT's what people are supposedly doing right now - FIGHTING for peace. I think a rewording, a reframing of that would be helpful and more in tune with the rest of the article. I suggest something like "let's work together for peace." -- though I don't know if I really like the word "work" either. I would prefer to laugh and play together for peace too. So let's cooperate and collaborate together for peace. I think focusing on such an INTENTION for peace is imperative. Unfortunately, I already read the messages of all the naysayers. I'm sure it's not easy to forget or even better forgive the past wrongs. I wonder how Palestinians are able to forget the words of past Israeli leaders. The words (along with the sound of the fighter jets, the bombs, the machine guns...) must ring in their ears and create great distrust of any Israeli Jews, just as all the violence committed by Palestinians towards Israelis makes the Israelis distrustful and fearful. Here are some quotes from the past: We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population -- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978. It is not as though there was a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist. --Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister (quoted in London Sunday Times -- June 15, 1969) The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs -- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982. Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories. -- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989. Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them. --Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998 The Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. --Moshe Dayan, in Haifa, quoted by Ha'aretz, April, 4 1969. Reproduced by Walid Khalidi in the book "All That Remains". There are many powerful cooperative methods for helping bridge differences and bring about peace. But both sides need to WANT to participate. There has been so much injustice committed towards the Palestinians, so many settlements, so many houses demolished, so many orchards destroyed. The wall and the Israeli-only roads separate the Palestinians into small ghettos. How can one build an independent Palestinian state with the land so divided? So much bitterness and fear.... yes, it is important to try to keep hope for peace alive... May Peace Prevail!

The extremist terrorists originate in the State of Israel. Palestinians need to defend themselves, resist. But Israel would not be able to get away with it if they weren't supported and their actions and policies endorsed by the USA.

There was a time the PLO was a dirty word, Arabs only had rocks, not guns, with which to attack Jews, and the idea of another Arab state in Gaza and the West bank was a bad joke - even at the State Dept. That was also a time when no Jews (or Arabs) were killed by suicide bombers and before a terrorist gang, Hamas, took over Gaza and the PA's government. Those were the days, Ray. Let's go back to them.

Everybody accepts the premise there should be peace. How to go about it, well, that is the hard part, and the source of disagreements. Please, it was one extremist who killed our prime minister, not all Israeli extremists; and yes, we have our right wingers and religious fanactics, but they come nowhere near, not even a fraction to the horrors of the Palestinian extremists. I know in order to bring two sides together you have to equalize, because two peoples can't live together if they are not on equal footing, but remember, these so-called occupiers, Jewish people, are victims of a holocaust, which will never disappear from their psyche, and all of North Africa and the majority of the Middle East are Arabs; doesn't it seem that job of reaching out first belongs to the Arabs?

1. I'm guessing Mr. Hanania doesn't live in Sderot, 2. I'm guessing he is a member of "Peace Now", Amnasty International, or has friends who are. 3. I'm guessing he hasn't figured out that pacifism is not a good military strategy. 4. I'm guessing he has never been in a phyical confrontation in his life.

Residents of Gaza are praying for Israel to retake Gaza: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zwaOlS1Cl-8. (by the way, this is not the first time we hear Gaza residents missing Israel). Residents of East Jerusalem have no intention of joining the Palestinian Authority. They'd rather live under Israili rule. Besides, Jerusalem was divided only between 1948-1967. Besides, all Israel has heard along its entire existence were threats of total annihilation, of being driven into the sea: "This will be a war of total destruction and massacre that will resemble the massacre of the Mongols and of the Crusaders" threatened Abdel Rahman Azam, Secretary-General of the Arab League on May 14, 1948, as Arab armies were invading Israel. Today we hear Iran threatening to nuke us. As to Khalidi's "work", it is just another piece of gross propaganda: This book is extremely misleading. In sections respectively labeled "occupation" and "depopulation, he lists and describes 418 villages, implying that in 1948, Israel forced Arabs from their homes and villages at gunpoint. At that time, however, thousands of ruins, abandoned during the Ottoman era, remained dotting Israel's countryside. Four years before Israel's War of Independence, a detailed study based on British Survey of Palestine maps listed 2,077 abandoned rural villages, hamlets and smaller sites--against only 1,274 inhabited Arab, Jewish and other villages and hamlets, some of them temporary. Furthermore, Dr. Robinson's 1841 book, Journal of Travels in the Year 1838 and H.B. Tristram's 633-page Land of Israel (1865), detail earthquakes, droughts, conscriptions, onerous taxes, internal wars, thievery, malaria, cholera and other epidemics that depopulated much of Israel long before 1880, when the first wave of Jewish immigration began. It's disturbing that a work touted as a great academic achievement includes none of these facts. Khalidi also omits the commonality of Ottoman depopulation programs. In Chio (Greece), Damascus, Hasbeiya and Aleppo, non-Muslims were slaughtered in 1822, 1858, 1859 and 1860. In southern Syria (as it was then called), the Turks conscripted all available youths and extorted "annual tax of several piastres for every fruit-tree from the very year it is planted," according to Tristram, even for olive trees that took 40 years to produce fruit. He and Robinson found Israel barren and empty, its villages poor--and frequently abandoned. In Tiberias, "almost exclusively a Jewish town," the Muslim quarter was in 1865 "almost wholly in ruins, having been overthrown in the great earthquake of 1837." A true academic masterpiece would have at least referred to prior devastation and justified the conclusions made in spite of it. Khalidi fails this test, failing to remark (as well) that Schwobel in 1904 found, against 329 inhabited rural Galilee areas, some 460 ruined villages and hamlets. Finally, Khalidi misses another study, which determined that Ottoman rule brought devastation and abandonment to at least 50% of Hebron area villages and hamlets, 26-27% near Tulkarem and Nablus and 85% in Lower eastern Galilee and the central Jordan Valley. The missing long-term perspective is bad enough, but equally disappointing is Khalidi's avoidance of the benefits that Arab labor derived from three decades of British administration (1918-48) and Jewish immigration, which together brought law, order, vital services, economic investment and modernization to the land. (to be continued)

From 1922 to 1947, Jewish agricultural settlements increased coastal plain citrus groves 971%, to 75,000 acres. No mention of that, or of the masses of workers these groves attracted from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Arabia--according to Arthur Ruppin, Bill Farrell, Justin McCarthy, Yehoshua Porath, Alexander Schlolch, Neville Mandel, Vital Cuinet and official Ottoman data. This is a significant omission since workers lived in temporary shacks on land they didn't own, and in 1948 abandonned them precisely because they were not permanent. Topping that is the failure to improve upon Arif al-Arif's 1950s historical-political study and personal archives. Alas, Khalidi's long, virulently anti-Israel introduction is followed by 418 sadly inaccurate surveys with only rough sketch-maps and photographs as backup. Although he lists each area's geographical attributes, history, distance from district capital, average elevation, land ownership, use, population and dwellings in 1931 and 1944, the blurred photographs could have been taken almost anywhere, including current-day West Bank villages. There are also blatant inaccuracies. Khalidi calls Fardisiya and Khirbat al-Buri villages. In 1945, Fardisiya (2.5 kilometres south of Tulkarem) had 20 inhabitants who owned less than 20 acres and four small buildings. This was a village? Furthermore, Fardisyia was not conquered, but was ceded to Israel under the 1949 armistice. For Khirbat al-Burj, 34 kilometres south of Haifa, Khalidi lists no population, but states that residents owned less than 4 acres. Air photos show two stone buildings and some hovels. Again, a village? In 1948, there were early 1940s British Royal Air Force photos showing sizes and numbers of houses, cultivated lands and villages. Israel supplemented these that year with high quality air photos of most rural areas involved in the war. The British Survey of Palestine included many detailed maps of villages later devastated. Until 1947, village headmen often kept population, economic and special event data in village notebooks. Israeli academics have also contributed substantial scholarship. But Khalidi did not consult any of the available data, including material declassified in the 1980s. He simply labeled these items "not available." Worse, Khalidi employs the flawed Mandate government Village Statistics 1945--which reflects exaggerations by which headmen enhanced government food rations. He also relies on a Beirut reproduction, whose editor further embellished the initial over-counts. The original categorized land ownership as "Arab, Jewish or others." Beirut editor Sami Hadawi disingenuously shifted all non-Jewish land--including churches, monasteries, institutions and organizations--to Arabs. Khalidi unreservedly repeats this deception. And finally, Khalidi omits or grossly misrepresents war-related factors that contributed to 1948 depopulation. He often reproduces portions of Israeli reports--out of context--solely to lay blame on Israel. He nowhere mentions Arab villagers' major war contributions, or the locations of villages relative to their grueling, months-long assault on Israel's roads. If the evidence was so overwhelming, why couldn't Khalidi obtain first-hand material from villagers who lived through these events?

"The feeling of so many 19th century visitors that the country had been waiting for the return of its lawful inhabitants was made the more significant by the shallowness of the Arab imprint on the country. In 1200 years of association, they build only a single town, Ramleh, established as the local subprovincial capital in the eighth century. The researchers of the 19th century scholars, beginning with the archaeologist Edward Robinson in 1838, revealed that hundreds of place-names of villages and sites, seemingly Arab, were Arabic renderings or translations of ancient Hebrew names. The Arabs have never even had a name of their own for this country which they claim. "Filastin" is merely the Arab transliteration of "Palestine," the name the Romans gave the country when they determined to obliterate the "presence of the Jewish people." (Samuel Katz, Battleground) Sir George A. Smith, author of the "Historical Geography of the Holy Land," wrote in 1891: ... Nor is there any indigenous civilization in Palestine that could take the place of the Turkish except that of the Jews who...have given to Palestine everything it has ever had of value to the world.' "Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa, not more than 5,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision... specifically... announcements over Arab radio by the Higher Arab Executive urging Arabs to leave... that those who remained, accepting Jewish protection, would be regarded as renegades." (The Economist (Oct. 2, 1948)) (It is worth mentioning that when the Templers arrived in the Holy Land a century earlier they found FOUR THOUSAND people residing in Haifa altogether. A fifteen fold increase is not due to birth rate alone). "The Arab States encouraged Palestine Arabs to leave their homes in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies." (The Jordanian newspaper Filastin (Feb. 19, 1949)) "The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Assam Pasha [told] the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and stay in neighboring states, lest the guns of invading Arab armies mow them down." (The New York Lebanese paper Al Hoda (June 8, 1951)) "Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab population to remain, that the Jewish state would honor and protect them." Haifa's British police chief reported in April, 1948 "In Tiberias I saw a sign fixed to a sealed Arab Mosque saying, 'We did not dispossess them... they will return... let no citizen touch their property.'" The New York Times (April 23, 1948) J. S. Buckingham described his visit of 1816 to Jaffa, which "has all the appearances of a poor village, and every part of it that we saw was of corresponding meanness" and Ramle, "where, as throughout the greater part of Palestine, the ruined portion seemed more extensive than that which was inhabited." In a German encyclopedia published in 1827, Palestine was depicted as "desolate and roamed through by Arab bands of robbers." In a book called Heth and Moab, Colonel C. R. Conder pronounced the Palestine of the 1880s "a ruined land." Pierre Loti, the noted French writer, wrote in 1895 of his visit to the land: "I traveled through sad Galilee in the spring, and I found it silent. . . ." In the vicinity of the Biblical Mount Gilboa, as elsewhere, as everywhere in Palestine, city and palaces have returned to the dust; This melancholy of abandonment, weighs on all the Holy Land." David Landes summarized the causes of the shriveling number of inhabitants: "As a result of centuries of Turkish neglect and misrule, following on the earlier ravages of successive conquerors, the land had been given over to sand, marsh, the anopheles mosquito, clan feuds, and Bedouin marauders. A population of several millions had shrunk to less than one tenth that number-perhaps a quarter of a million around 1800, and 300,000 at mid-century."

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99. --Moshe Dayan, in Haifa, quoted by Ha'aretz, April, 4 1969. Reproduced by Walid Khalidi in the book "All That Remains". Or is it just another 1001 Arabian Nights story?

Thank you! Excellent fact based writing. I have read some books and many articles on the region. I suspect apologists like Arja will not respond to your talkback. They are simply misinformed and reject all facts that reveal truth. While they always quote bias sources as without question. Bibi did a similar book in the 1990's where much of his information was quoted from sources in the 1780's and mid 1800's also Dr. Mitchell Bard has put together a similar writing, but my G-D you blew them both away. Impressive!!! Mark from Georgia

my analysis is not entirely original. I compiled a number of sources readily available on the net. Now regarding the quote attributed by some to Ben-Gurion (http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm) and by others to Moshe Dayan: The quote is taken from an address Dayan gave to Technion University students on March 19, 1969. A transcript of the speech appeared in Ha'aretz on April 4, 1969. In answer to a student's question suggesting that Israel adopt a policy of punishing Arabs who commit crimes in the West Bank by deportation to Jordan, Dayan answers that he is vehemently opposed to this idea, insisting that the answer to the longstanding Arab-Israeli problem is to learn to live together with Arab neighbors. He goes on to say: "We came to a region of land that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In a considerable number of places, WE PURCHASED THE LAND from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages. You don't even know the names [of the previous Arab villages] and I don't blame you, because those geography books aren't around anymore. Not only the books, the villages aren't around. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, and Gvat was established in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Huneifis and Kfar Yehoshua in the place of Tel Shaman. There isn't any place that was established in an area where there had not at one time been an Arab settlement." Dayan's conclusion was that the solution to the Arab-Israeli problem is to learn to coexist with them. http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_article=371 Now the places in question: Nahalal was established in 1921 (27 years before the creation of the State). Gvat - 1921 Sarid - 1926 (22 years before the the creation of the State) Kfar Yehoshua - 1927 (21 years before the creation of the State) All four during the British Mandate. I would have expected Prof. Khalidi to do some proper research rather than misquote Dayan. The same goes for Arja (a teacher, or former teacher), quite adro "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan. " - Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, in an interview with Dutch newspaper Trouw. Here he is confirming what Golda had said eight years earlier.

After reading your article, Ray, I felt that you were expressing the way many of us feel for a long time. So much tragedy has befallen both the Israelis and Palestinians. It fills us all with a feeling of frustration and hopelessness as to whether the ever evasive peace will ever be achieved. Yes, the extremists on both sides do all in their power to scuttleany peace attempts. It is now left to the ordinary people to make the peace. Thank God for chats on the internet whereby we can contact each other and create dialogue online between Israelis and Palestinians. On both sides there is an empathetic ear. Both peoples have more in common than that which divides them and it is this common humanity that must be used to bring us together where both governments have failed.

usuall stand on street corners in big cities and sell pencils out of tin cups. They also, just like you, paste hundreds of pages of crap on boards and shout nonesense about history and quote obsure books written by insignificant authors with a self-serving and worthless "Dr." title Have you see a doctor for your condition?

Your being impressed by a book that Bibi, a third-rate bigot and politcal homeless arse, has wrotten shows your single digit IQ has done irreprable contribution to dumbing down of Peachtree state.

is just another rabid alley cat long overdue for her shots and spaying. Here, kitty kitty kitty...

As usual words are taken out of context to attack on a personal level the messenger. I did use the word " Impressive " once at the end of the talkback. It referred to" israeli, Israel " for for his well researched response to Arja, who posted lies based on poor reseach and selections of bias sources. They intentionally alter quotes to fit in with the lies constantly repeated by the Pals and their defenders. That means you Persian CAT. With regard to BiBi's book " Israel a Place Among the Nations " I simply stated that he used the same approach of quoting writers from the late 1780's to mid 1800's so that he couldn't be accused of bias research ( i.e. Mark Twain in "Innocents Abroad " ) to dispel the notion of a land teaming with busy productive Arabs that were thrown off the land ( as we now know, that is simply BS ) but still gets repeated, Why don't you impress us with facts that dispute BiBi or "israeli " instead of name calling and attacks on the south. Come on, show us your IQ which you think is over single digits. Submitted for your approval Mark from Georgia

History is not as clear cut as base ten arithmetic where five plus five adds up to ten. Unfortunately, history is based on interpretation of incidents and events and yes, we do choose what we want to emphasize and include and yes, omit. Are you saying that the research conducted by you and Israel is so thorough and accurate that you can judge everyone else's research to be so wrong? Are you saying that Ilon Pappe's research is all lies? Or Norman Finkelman's? Michael Neumann's? I do notice that Palestinian versions tend to omit Israeli perspectives and Israeli perspectives tend to ignore the Palestinian point of view. I like to look at multiple sources. But then history is just a story about the PAST. For me what's important is May 2007. So, let's look at the current situation. There is NOTHING on earth (or heaven for that matter if I believed in it) that justifies Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. It is a brutal occupation/apartheid/prison-kind of treatment of a people who used to live on that land and now live under deplorable conditions because the Israelis want that land. The evidence for that is in front of our noses: Israel keeps building settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes and orchards, doing everything to make life for Palestinians hell. THAT was happening before there were any suicide bombers. It was NOT a matter of "security" as Israel tries to tell the world in order to justify their criminal acts against the Palestinians. Do tell, why DO the Jews have a right to take the land from the Palestinians, to make Israel their home? No one has been able to tell me anything that makes sense. To say that God gave the Jews the land is NOT acceptable! Nor does the fact that some people believe that Palestine is the ANCIENT home of the Jews.. Nevertheless, Israel is a fact now, and Palestinians must learn to live with it, as must the Israelis learn to live with the fact that the Palestinians are there to stay. Learn to make peace rather than war.

Ilan Pappe approved the thesis of Theodore Katz who later lost a law suit for libel after it was proven that he has simply INVENTED testimonies as evidence for his thesis. Pappe has repeatedly based many of his works on ONE testimony and simply ASSUMED that this testimony is representative of a majority. Most incriminatingly, Pappe has openly said "historians need not be concerned with the truth. History is not based on fact but on what they believe facts to be." So, I think people are rather justified in doubting his veracity. Finkelstein is less overtly a liar, but some of his sources have been discredited as well.

so when history slaps you in the face you shout even louder than usual, because you can't go beyond Pappe and Finkelstein. You forgot Benny Morris another "historian", but I'll tell you that he is quietly retracting his theories because he was confronted with facts. Arja - the itellectual Illegally occupying Indian land in Canada. You Canadians made sure to reduce the American natives to insignificant numbers, took their lands, killed their bison and shut them up in reservation, but don't hesitate to preach to others. Just go read 19th century travellers' records of the Holy Land, and you will see that the land was mostly deserted and lying in ruins: Robinson, Tristram and others. Go read the story of the Templers who arrived in the 1850's or thereabouts in the Holy Land and find out that people were living Stone Age-like conditions. All avaialbe on the net for free. Read Mark Twain, also available on the net for free. "Peel Commission Chapter IV, Government; (5) Arab alarm at the continued Jewish purchase of land;" Read about Sir Moses Montefiore who bought land around Jerusalem in the 1860's and built the first neighborhood outside the Old City walls. Read how Jews bought land in Jerusalem from the various churches (Greek, e.g.) who needed cash. That's why you are not interested in history, because your theories crumble. As for May 2007, your friends launched ovver 250 qassams in two weeks, killed and maimed people and destroyed property. In May 2007 inhabitants of Gaza are praying for Israel to take them back. How do you explain that they'd rather live under occupation than under freely-elected Hamas?