>>>>Perhaps pigs will fly. Perhaps Israel will become equally nonbelligerent.
>>>>
>>>>Let's face it, they have been fighting a religious war there for longer than any of has been alive. They will continue to fight. Leave them to it. They can fight until the last whiff of olives and camel dung is gone for all I care. Mideast extremists are seriously f***ing up my country and I am angry at both sides.
>>>
>>>Do you have any reason to believe that Israel would provoke war if its neighbors would leave it alone?
>>>
>>
>>I think the hostilities have run in both directions. The main resentment of the Palestinians, and other Arabs, is Israel's insistence that territory that is equally sacred to Muslims belongs to Israel only. Let's not forget Mossad death squads or Israel building settlements in areas that are 99% Arab. No one is claiming the Palestinians are blameless or condoning terrorism. But Israel is not blameless, either.
>
>Let's see. When East Jerusalem was under Arab control, Jews couldn't visit the temple site. When Israel got control, the site was opened to the world.
>
>As for settlements, to my (possibly incomplete) knowledge, none of them were built on settled land. They were built in empty spaces. Yeah, the neighboring communities were Arab. So?
>
>Tamar


most if not all of the settlements are illegal, steming from the U.N. Security Council Resolution 446
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/settlement-euphemisms.html

and the reasons for the settlements?
Moshe Dayan: (one time army chief of staff of israel) "settlements are important not because they can insure security better than the army, but because without settlements, we cannot keep the army in those territories"