I believe that's why most of the Israeli public has traditionally supported the two state solution; they realize that those are people with homes too. But that may be changing-obviously Micro could better answer that than any of us.
Every single important political party in Israel supports some form of a two-state solution - Labor, Likud, Kadima, Israel Beitenu. It's utterly ridiculous to think Israel can conquer or maintain control of the Territories for a long term, or that such a thing would be somehow desirable for Israel.
Whatever that country is, it is not one of "admirable restraint" against Palestinians.
Here I will have to agree with Manedwolf. I was in the Army (though not in a combat capacity), and I think the Army does take steps, again and again, to assure the safety of Palestinian civilians as much as possible. But that said, the realities of urban warfare are such that you will never eliminate civilian casualties altogether when you have two sides going at it with tanks and grenades and rockets and whatnot, and sometimes the Army DOES unduly abuse the Palestinians, and I have stories of that too that I could tell.
And there is no Palestine. There never was.
Uttely irrelevant. What you have here is an ethnically separate population that was ALWAYS there, that talks a different language from us and has a different culture. There's no reason Israel should control their territory, nor does it benefit from it.
That said, the Hamas are a band of smacktards, who are out to do nothing else but fight their Holy Jihad, no matter what it does to the very people they're claiming to help.
People who want to make peace will have to recognize that both Jews and Arabs have rights.
And that's precisely correct.
Both the nutjobs who think we need to carpet-bomb Gaza, and the left-wing nutjobs who whine that ISrael should not exist - and I know such nutjobs ON MY CAMPUS - are harmful to the peace process.
Only by realising the people on the other side of the concrete fence have legitimate concerns will we resolve this problem.
