what do you think will happen with Israel-Palestine?

After thirty years (or nuclear/chemical/biological atrocity from either side) the world gets bored and bangs their heads together and get told that you have to share. A hopefully smarter younger generation take over. Call me a cynical dreamer.

I also reckon that eventually Israelis will wake up to how many of their country's citizens are not Jewish, and Israel will become more a country with a Jewish majority rather than a Jewish state.

I reckon that as part of some huge settlement their host countries will end up being paid a load of money to give them full citizenship rights. I don't foresee them ever being given the right to return to their or their parents' place of residence in Israel proper.

Basically, as the settler population grows and "settles", the idiginous population will be basically whiped out, and the remainders will be shoved into "reservations" (or, as they're called in "The Holy Land"...'refugee camps') that grow smaller and smaller over the years.

The indiginous population of the area will continue to fight back with attacks considered "savage" and "barbaric" (suicide bombing now = scalping then?),and, in fact, these same terms are often used in Israeli descriptions of the Palestinians.

Basically, what happened to the American Indians is what's in store for the Palestinians. Hell, it's already been going on for more than 50 years.

I can't speak for the Palestinians, but, after visiting Israel, I have a better perspective of what is being felt there.

When I went, in January of 2001, most, if not all, of the people I met there were very much in favor of peace, and willing to make concessions towards that end, including the creation of a Palestinian state. The right-wing government there did not seem representative of the views of a significant amount of people, maybe even the majority (this should ring a bell to those of us in the USA). The ascent of the right-wing there has a little to do, though, with the frustrations of liberals who are starting to belive that there is nothing they can do to ever satisfy the Palestinians. It may seem to them, at this point, that any action will cause the same outcome, ie more bombings (an *inexact* analogy *could* be the attitudes of some neo-conservatives to reparations for African-Americans, ie no amount of money will end the disenchantment of poor blacks with white america)

I remember meeting some people on a kibbutz there that were engaged in an Israeli-Palestinian partnership. I feel really sad when I think about the stigmitazation that was felt by both sides, though it seemed much tougher for the Palestinian members there to take the stand that they did compared to the Israelis. It must be much worse for both sides now compared to when I visited. Change in these sorts of matters is slow, and takes a lot of work, and I can't help but thinking that the highly charged climate in the Middle East will make work like this always more difficult.

I know we aren't supposed to discuss the "should" aspect of this matter, but I want to just say that unless Israel stops building settlements, the Palestinians will always feel like they are being backed into a corner, and they will therefore feel pressured to retaliate. No calm and rational solution to the problem will be found until the aformentioned cessation occurs. I also blame the many Arab nations that will NOT accept Palestinian refugees as full citizens, probably in order to ensure the continuation of the conflict.

As a side note, I feel compelled to add that Israel is a very secular state. Whereas Jews is America can pick from a host of movements that require varying degrees of ritual, sacrifice, etc., my experience of Israel is that it is much more cut and dry there. An Isaraeli is most likely either Orthodox (though there are a variety of movements within this realm), or not a practicing Jew. The rough analogy to Christianity would be the choice between Catholicism or nothing.

Israel is 60. I don't know if there's anything new to discuss, except that I feel like I see things more clearly than ever - what was wrong with the way the state was founded and the displacement of most of the Arabs who lived there, what was wrong with and continues to be wrong with the occupation, why many Jews have a moral blind spot on Israel and why the situation seems so intractable. I feel like I've gone through a long, slow process of deprogramming, maybe one that started when I was 14 and met a Palestinian my age for the first time, but one that didn't really pick up until late in college. And it took not only Chomskies and Saids and Amira Hasses and the like but also determined friends to make me see it.

And yet I now have a real, familial connection to the state as it exists on the ground, and perhaps I continue to maintain a kind of inverted sentimental attachment to it, even a slight obsession with it, almost like it were an abusive parent and I had become cognizant of the abuse.

Sorry if this is painfully earnest.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080928/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians
Exiting Olmert warns of "evil wind of extremism," meaning extremist Jews, not Palestinians. It's no "beware the military industrial complex," but it's a ballsier thing to say right now for an Israeli PM than some here might realize.

Evil wind jokes in 5...4...

Was just reading about this -- would it have been better for him to say it in office?

This is being interpreted as pointing more at settlers than the mainstream public or political process, right? That seems important to me, because if Israel ceases to be able to control its settlers, it actually pulls them toward the level of the Palestinians -- i.e., the authority you're negotiating peace with doesn't actually have the ability or political will to control the problems you're negotiating over.