What I know is, UNIFIL was created by the UN, that UNIFIL troops were deployed to secure Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 1978. Also that UN Emergency Force (UNEF) troops were deployed to end the Suez crisis in 1956. The job of both the UN and NATO is to facilitate peace throughout the nations of the world.

b/c that's the core issue of the Middle-East Problem. The Arabs never accepted Jews next to them. Also now you can see that - Israel left all of Southern Lebanon, and rockets got fired into Israel. Israel expelled all Jewish People in the Gaza Strip (it is essentially "Judenrein" if you know what I mean) and still rockets are being fired on Israel. And Abbas declared on 31.12.10 that no Israeli is allowed to live in a future Palestine (he didn't mean the arab Israelis I bet) and in 2009 he stated on Pal TV he will never recognize a Jewish, or socialist or whatever kind - he never accepts Israel. And by the way it's not only a religion, it is one people. Know your facts.

To rectify any lack of familiarity with history, and the rewriting thereof, "Jewish" is not solely a matter of religion. "Judaism" merely means "the religion of the Jews". The insistence on "Jewish State" is to clearly define Israel as the national home of the *Jewish people*. We're a national, etho-cultural-religious group, the children of Israel. The difference between merely tolerating Israel as a shifting state and recognizing it as the nation-state of the Jewish people is that one is malleable, the other is concrete. The former allows for multi-national state constructs that have a tendency of leading to civil wars or, in the case of Belgium, such an utter disconnect from the nation-construct that people don't care anymore. The latter is a nation-state with a clearly defined national identity, cultural and historical roots, and not that easy to force several million Palestinians into and vote a "merge with our Palestinian brothers" law into existence, or just plain destabilize it enough that democracy doesn't matter anymore. So for those not listening, we're not just a religious minority that got a pity-state because they got massacred so much. Just saying.

And they are doing a sterling job-right?

#43 Well said. However, Palestine will border on Oz and Neverland; it's fictional neighbors. It's gross national product and population will be similar to those of Oz and Neverland. Mind you, a few people will continue to post on Ynet and other sites pretending to be citizens of fictional Palestine.

They're doing a better job of facilitating peace than Israel is.

Neither the UNEF nor UNIFIL suceeded in keeping peace. NATO has to bomb people to try to keep "peace". And the UN dithers when they need to act. Some job!