as its maximalist dream (actually, Herut, parent of Likud, would have Israel's border with Saudi Arabia, in a perfect if unrealistic dream: in other words, an Israel on both sides of the Jordan and, no doubt, arabrein) the reality is that Netanyahu, ten years younger and more intransigent than today, nearly brokered a deal with Arafat at Wye River which closely resembled that which Barak was encouraged to endorse at Camp David. In other words, GDRIVER, Likud's present position is two states for two people on the west bank of the Jordan.

express yourself with passion, perhaps a little more "dispassion" might result in a more realistic and logical criticism. Ehud Barak is Defense Minister, the face of Israel's potential response to those who would threaten the state. Would you have Israel's defense minister pattern himself on the US president and appeal to the Iranian nuclear threat with a platform of swords into plowshares? If Ahmadinejad disdainfully dismisses the gesture by the most powerful nuclear power in the world, what do you suppose he would think of tiny Israel pleading for reason?

As prime minister of Israel Ehud Barak (the same you call "warmonger," offered Arafat precisely that which the Palestinian demanded, withdrawal to the 1967 borders with land exchanges to compensate for the few settlements contiguous with the borders of Israel; East Jerusalem (along with the mosques atop the Temple Mount) and a token "return" of Diaspora Palestinians. Should the Palestinians ever decide they truly do want a state, and are willing to share west bank Palestinians with a state of the Jews, they will have to accept their state within those same parameters because anything beyond that would endanger Jewish independence. Israel is not likely to accept surrender of Jewish sovereignty as the price for Palestinian statehood, which appears the true endgame of the Palestinian dream.

That dream, GDRIVER, would not happen to be one you share with the enemies of Israel, would it?

and so are your Israel-bashing intentions. One need not be a Likudnik to appreciate the thrust of your well-tailored “facts.” True, there are settlements and true also those who live in those communities are loathe to abandon their homes. I refer you to my response of earlier today, Your argument has some merit and certainly quotes Arafat, for some background on the settlements, and some history of Palestinian resistance to statehood. As regards the removal of the settlements, any reading of history is evidence of all Israeli governments willingness to abandon most in exchange for peace. As regards the wall, since its construction terrorist acts originating in the West Bank have reduced to near zero since its construction. And that explains its purpose.

If and when the Palestinians accept the responsibility of statehood and peace with Israel none of those facts you pose will stand in the way of Israel conforming to that peace. Including the removal of the IDF from territories under Palestinian control. Unfortunately, a main reason for the presence of the IDF in those territories is to support an Abbas government dependent on the vilified IDF for its security and existence.

Actually, it is more like saying that Bin Laden is merely a dissident, who opposes to US establishment.
Shameful indeed.

correctly. But your history does not go back far enough, and some of the facts you present miss the point of the history you do relate to. In the wake of the '67 war, long before Israel began building "settlements (actually defense outposts, originally), Moshe Dayan is famously described as sitting by his telephone, waiting for the Arab states to call. At the time Israel was willing to return all territories won in a war initiated by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, including the West Bank and Sinai-Gaza, in exchange for peace. As I recall, all Israel wanted at the time was the demilitarization of those territories and a long-term lease of a string of outposts in the Jordan Valley, the Alon Line, an early warning defense to any future threat of aggression. In response to Dayan Khartoum produced the famous Three No's, No Recognition, etc. Those settlements began as an expanding network of defense outposts, a prod to the Palestinians to make peace. Eventually the outposts grew, and the nature of their existence changed from outpost to community. They were never intended, nor do they exist today as a permanent territory grab and barrier to a contiguous land mass for a Palestinian state, one of your charges against Israel. In 1967, in the Netanyahu-Arafat negotiations at Wye River, in the Barak-Arafat negotiations at Camp David, in the Olmert-Abbas negotiations in 2008 the discussions never faltered on the presence of the "settlements" since Israel has always been willing to evacuate all except those that grew into cities that abut the Jewish state. No, the barrier to a just peace has always been the hesitation of the Palestinians to accept self-government, continuing acceptance of their image and status as aggrieved victim. And it is precisely this that turns those, including myself, who have long supported Palestinian statehood to gradually turn away in despair and, yes, disgust.

No, the question has never been about settlements and occupation, but about the acceptance of self governance, of creating a unified if diverse Palestinian society under a government able and willing to live in peace with Israel. And whenever peace appears close whoever happens to be "rais" at the time withdraws in fear and raises that time-honored deal-breaker, the refugee issue. Most settlements would go, Jerusalem would be shared; but to expect Israel to accept "all descendents of the original refugees in their abandoned homes" is nothing short of demanding Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state, national suicide.

Israel has been sovereign and independent for more than 60 years while the Palestinians have chosen their present self-loathsome status. Until the Palestinians unify as a society, accept responsibility for self-governance, accept the existence of Israel, until this happens the Palestinians will continue not only stateless but pitiable wards of the world, without dignity, without self-respect. Because in the end no US president, no combination of world powers can deliver to the Palestinians that which they themselves choose not to accept.

reading of my comments might suggest a more nuanced critique of Palestinian leadership as the single most important roadblock to statehood. I never said, nor implied that I believed Israel blameless, that Israeli policies and actions also contribute to the ongoing misery of the Palestinian people. But then, US national interests also, and perhaps principally, contribute to the present state of affairs. Certainly you are aware that it was President Bush who, in his bid to “democratize” Middle East politics, characteristically dismissed the best advice of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, both of whom clearly saw a Hamas victory as outcome. But Bush insisted. And once Hamas emerged did emerge victorious it was, again, the US president who encouraged, armed, trained and financed Fateh’s Dahlan to attempt that disastrous coup against Hamas which turned into a predictable Fateh route leaving the fundamentalist, anti-peace Hamas undisputed ruler in Gaza, the open division of Palestinian territory into two rump mini-states.

If you are looking for a true contemporary smoking gun in this continuing tragedy of Palestinian misery then you might look a bit closer to home. US, not Israeli, nor even Palestinian actions created the current state of affairs of two Palestinian territories divided socially, culturally and politically. And thanks to this division, since the distance between the Islamists and secularists appears so wide, the possibility of even talking of a unified Palestinian state any time soon is polyandrous. And unless and until the Palestinians can make peace among themselves the question of peace between them and Israel cannot even come into play. But your comments were limited to Israel-as-aggressor, so I wont go into the impact of multiple such US policy blunders by serial US administrations upon the present state of affairs in the Middle East.

What I did write is that the failure of the Palestinians their history of failure to produce a leadership capable of uniting the people, of overcoming real or imagined grievances, of exploiting opportunities to achieve that which they claim to want. If the desire of Palestinian society is statehood their leaders consistently ignored or rejected every opportunity, in 1947, 1967, 2000, to do so. While we can accept or not their stated excuses for doing so, “principles,” “pride,” “refugee and property rights” at bottom I suggest the thread of rejection has changed little over time, and exists more openly today than ever before in the fault line in Palestinian society and politics. Palestinian leadership could never, for the sake of their people and statehood, overcome their own internal maximalist conditions. And the current situation between Hamas and Fateh are the clearest expression of that problem.

were not under one occuppier or another. First the Ottoman Turks until they lost the territory to the British and French. Then the British until they lost their empire and quit Palestine and India. Then the Jordanians in the West Bank, and the Egyptians in Gaza, until they lost the war with Israel. And now and, I would say, to the detriment of both sides, Israel, who defeated Egypt and Jordan in 1967.

And an aside I, for one, argued in the wake of the Hamas election victory that Israel would do well to explore the possibilities of replacing the apparently disciplined and principled Hamas for the ineffective and corrupt Fateh as negotiating partner. Hamas is, after all, Islamist-nationalist, not pan-Arabist. If statehood and peace was not yet a likely outcome, at least the 50-year Hudna might allow both sides to live in relative calm. and relative calm is a damnsight better than recurrent Intifada aimed at Israel, but fed by despair due to ineffective and corrupt political management.

Actions by the State of Israel the inspiration for al-Quaida and the World Trade Center, “or worse”? Are you even aware that European conquest and imperialism, arrogance and exploitation might have inspired the sense of rage and inferiority the cause of Arab anger and al-Quaida? Israel might or not be hated on her own merits as a Jewish presence by the Arabs, but she is seen and described as a continuation of European Imperialism. Your passion for your cause, BALANCED, clearly blinds you to fact, history and contemporary reality.

You identify the views of a radical minority of “settlers” with that of the state. Would you do the same say, for the KKK or Identity Movement or the other fringe fanatical American groups with the character and policy of the United States? I think not.

Under what you refer to as the occupation by the “murderous IDF” there were twenty years of relative peace and quiet, free movement in both directions across the Green Line. Not the poverty, the frustration of checkpoints; no walls separating Jew from Arab. What you refer to as the “suffering of the Palestinians” arrived with the return of the PLO to Palestine, with Oslo. In fact, the Troubles only began in 1989 when Arafat let loose the First Intifada, the one that young Marwan Barghouti, for whom our article was written, cut his teeth. Intifada, a misguided and self-punishing instrument of PLO “diplomacy” meant to pressure Israel into concessions beyond those already affording legitimacy and statehood. And when Arafat unleashed his glorious Second Intifada, the one that emblazoned in memory that murderous mob bludgeoning to death their two young Israeli prisoners, dumping their bodies from that window and proudly flashing those blood-drenched hands for the world press to record, that was the true beginning of what you excitedly refer to as the “murderous actions of the IDF.” Except Israel’s response was not impulsive and “murderous” but a slow and graduated response to contain the Intifada, to halt cross-border terror. Those roadblocks, that wall which so effectively put a halt to cross-border attacks are actually a humane response, punishing, to be sure, a deterrent (not punishment) to terror.

Compare Israel’s response to those committed by America and Europe faced with what they considered terrorism: the Germans thought nothing of murdering the entire populations man, woman and child, young and elderly; of leveling every last building, of erasing whole towns from the map in response to attacks by partisans; and the US was self-justified in the slaughter of entire villages of Native Americans for the same reason, of expelling entire tribes from fertile and desired land in order to make way for their settlers. The difference between the Jewish state and the West is precisely that the State of Israel never intended to keep the spoils of war, never intended to expel the “natives” for their growing population as did America. Holier-than-thou may “feel” good, Balanced, but a little historical knowledge, a bit more understanding of how things happen in the real world might move you beyond your passionate bigotry. You might want to apply your much vaunted Geneva Convention a bit closer to home.

most able because of charisma to unite Fateh, to end the corruption for which the “old guard” of that party are so well disdained. Perhaps he might even be able to reinvent Fateh into the vanguard of Palestinian politics that Arafat headed while in the Diaspora. But one has to recall that, while he may or not in his heart of hearts want to come to terms with a Jewish state sharing what was once defined by the British imperialists as Palestine, the question remains under what conditions. In 2000 Arafat turned down a division of the land based on the 1967 borders, with minor compensated adjustments for towns abutting Israel proper. His pretext, if one ignores his comment to that Saudi journalist that "I would be assassinated if I signed that paper," fell back on that time-tested deal-breaker, the return of the "refugees" to Israel. It is my understanding that the designated moderate of Fateh, Mahmoud Abbas, also turned down a perhaps more generous offer by Ehud Olmert on that same deal-breaker basis. Is any one of Barghouti’s advocates, within Israel or without, in a position to state that he would be willing to do that which neither he nor his mentors would have advocated in the past, a settlement that would assure security for the Jewish state within and without; that Barghouti would now work for a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines, with minor land swaps allowing proximal settlements to remain under Israeli sovereignty? Is the leader of the Tanzim and Second Intifada willing to abandon Fateh’s (and Hamas’ ambition) of a one-state solution in which the Jews may or not be tolerated as a minority, an outcome also reaffirmed by the recent Fateh convention? Based on the words and actions of Barghouti and Fateh, acceptance of a mutually cooperating two-state solution along the lines of Camp David does not appear likely.
But, then, DR. BEBLAWY, your comments sound to me more a dream of finally uniting Palestine around a charismatic leader than the promise of rather than the promise of Barghouti as peacemaker. And perhaps the two may be combined. But the history of Palestinian politics, the refusal of past Palestinian leaders from the time of the British Mandate to the present makes such an outcome any time soon appear in the best light a mirage, and at worst an effort to produce a charismatic leader to unify and rally the Palestinian people for a successful push for the dreamed of one-state resolution.