johngalt

While i despise how both sides are acting, i side with the Palestinians. They were living there when they were forced to accept Europe's Jews because no other country would take them. I fault the British, the US, and the United Nations. None of them had a right to just put a group of people and plant them into a country. Why couldn't the US and the British take these Jews? Well, i guess they didn't want to, so they dumped them where they thought there wouldn't be a lot of objections. They were wrong.

The suicide bombers have a very bad reputation with pretty much everyone. I don't agree with what they do, and i am sure not man people do. There are I think 2 main reasons why they do this: 1) they think that they will go to paradise 2)They are usually very poor and their families get compensated by religious extremist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. These sucide bombers do not have much to live for. They are refugees in their own country and are treated like dirt by the Israeli's. The Israeli's, in turn, are America's puppet.

lunachick

I'm a Palestinian sympathiser.

Majestyk

Palestine. There's an unconfortable similarity between the Israeli/Palestine situation and the U.S. treatment of Native Americans during its "Manifest Destiny" expansion.

Mike Rosoft

I guess I am on the side of peace. I definitely don't support Palestinian terrorism, but actions of Israeli forces are often no better.


Mike Rosoft

Derec

Am I the only one that suppoerts Israel?

Yes, they do have their faults but at least they are a democratic, civilized country. There is no Israeli Hamas or Jewish Jihad. Israelis do not blow up buses and restaurants on purpose.
Israel was willing to concede many points but it was the Paletinian leadership that called off negotiations and called for Intifada in 2000. Therefore the blood (both Israeli and Palestinian) of the last 3 years is on their hands.

Also Israel does not keep "refugees" in camps, Arabs do. They could have been integrated in Palestinian/Arab society decades ago.

UMoC

Mediancat

Every dialogue I've ever heard on the radio between a backer of Israel and a supporter of Palestine goes about like this:

Israel: "Of course the majority of Israelis wish to live in peace. But when we are subjected to [insert recent terrorist attack here], it's more and more hard to take Palestinian claims seriously."

Palestine: "That attack was only in response to [insert Israeli military action here], which killed ten people -- six more than the suicide bomber."

Israeli: "And that was in response to [earlier suicide bombing], which killed two innocent children.

Palestinian: Even [random Israeli moderate] has agreed, that was an attack by an individual, no matter what [terrorist group] claimed later. To blame all Palestinians is grossly unfair."

After which point it becomes a can-you-top-this list of atrocities, with the politeness of the earlier exchanging devolving into (if we're lucky) veiled hostility, and (if we're unlucky) a screaming match.

A plague on both their houses.

Rob aka Mediancat

HaysooChreesto!

I have to go with Israel.

This "problem" is a war of religous hatred that's been publicly stated time and time on the part of Israel's Arab neighbors. Rather than making peace, they teach their children to hate their neighbor and blame Israel for so many of their woes.
If the Arab nations in the surrounding area really gave a damn about the Palestinians they could've absorbed them long ago instead of turning them out.
The Israel/Palestinian issue is the ultimate red herring for the Arab nations. "Nothing can be done unless the Palestinian issue is addressed".

Farren

I'd have to say presenting the "side's" as simply Israel and Palestinte is throwing up cognitive dissonance, and forces those who have a more subtle understanding to make negative statements like "A plague on both their houses".

I'm in agreement with peace loving Israeli's and Palestineans, however few they are these days, and I would say opposed to both Arafat and Sharon, but with much greater bias against Sharon simply because the Israeli's are in the dominant position and have greater capacity to help peace break out.

Instead, Sharon's government meets force with multiples of force, and drives already destitute Palistineans off their land to make way for Jewish settlers, in a clear effort to achieve ethnic cleansing by increments.

Unbeliever

Maybe the land should go back to the Caananites?

fatherphil

no, but i get too tired of this old saw here i usually don't bother cutting