Declaring a victory...

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Hamas won this one. How is that? Simple. Israel has always said that the entire West Bank and Gaza belongs in its security perimeter, and thus they have the right to do whatever they want there. If they want to go into some place and kill someone, to bomb something, that's their right. The US backs Israel up on that. The agreement that Israel signed says that no, Israel can't do what it wants. Now, I don't think for a moment that Israel will not creatively interpret it with US backing and make it meaningless, but they still signed the paper. I think that as far as Netanyahu is concerned, the war served its purpose; a cheap act of sadism designed to boost him for the election, particularly as there are war criminals challenging him and he wants to have better war criminal credentials. For the war to be cheap it requires just some bombings without the risk involved in sending ground forces. Thus, this serves his cynical political purpose. Nevertheless, the paper signed has words to which no Israeli Zionist or its American backer has ever accepted ever!

The Palestinians need to recognise the right of the Israeli state to exist and to defend itself from those who wish it harm. Problem is that no Palestinian leader can really offer this (not Arafat, not Abbas, not anyone) because they know that the entire "Palestinian" movement is so geared to getting rid of Israel that as soon as they would propose that, they'd be rapidly bumped off by the rest of the movement. It's a tragic situation, both for the Arabs that don't want this stupid, destructive, pointless war and suffer its effects and for the Israelis that have to live next to people who want them all dead (and suffer its effects).

The Israelis are fighting for their very survival. They'd be happy to give the Palestinians their state for peace, but only if it's genuine peace. They won't give the Palestinians a state if all they use it for is a means to attack Israel. They can easily notice that by the temperature of the debate in both the disputed territories in the wider Arab world. Notice how many times the Palestinians have been offered states in the past, and they've simply walked away from any deal with Israel at the last minute. The Palestinian leadership keep their "war" against Israel going for power, money and prestige in the Arab world, they keep their people angry and resentful and hostile and focused on Israel to avoid them actually having to deal with the appalling, corrupt, pisspoor mess that is their own administration of their territories (and increasingly Taliban-like in the case of Gaza). The Israelis live in a clean, first-world environment; the Palestinians live in backward squalor.

The problem is that neither community in Northern Ireland was directly calling into question the very right of the other faction's populations to even exist, whereas the Palestinians are (and both communities have lived side by side in relative peace under a UK agreement - this has never happened in Israel). To add to that, the Israelis have nowhere to go back to. Even though NI is very much their home, Ulster Protestants could go 'back' to Britain. Israelis can't go back anywhere - Israel is all they have.

Although there were terrorist atrocities on both sides, the republican population weren't calling for the complete driving of unionists into the sea and weren't being helped in this by several surrounding countries, either.

Your Comparison Doesn't Pan Out
I think the difference would be that irish shared the same value system, just only with regards to the group that they belonged to. Israelis and Palestinians have a gulf of difference so vast, that to grow up and out would mean further diverging from each other.

One side wants peace, the other doesn't.
One side loves life, the other loves death.
One side is willing to swap land for peace, the other wants its opponents expelled in full.
One side is tolerant, the other side is racist xenophobic, bigoted, sexist, fascistic, nazi-like, zealots, etc.
One side recognizes that there is a Palestinian people, the other does not recognize that there is a Jewish people.
One side's youth are citizens of the world, the other sends kids to die in vain as human shields or suicide bombers.

The problem is not "growing up," or the lack of leadership. This is the same left wing drivel pushed pre-Marx. They think if we can just make the political and economic situation work, because the corrupted politics and corrupted economics is the root of all evil, then, we can see things progress. The conservative response is: no amount of political and economic policy will ever make up for a evil, unethical, embedded, accepted, and worshipped value-system.


Values Matter, Not Politics/Economics
Politics in the final analysis is the expression of the moral qualities of a country, rather then the cause of it. Corruption comes from within, you have to empower the relationships which are the bedrock of society. Raising good children with an ethical foundation that is reinforced by an ethical culture will lead to ethical lawyers, doctors, politicians, and so forth who can collectively influence positive change in society. But the battle begins in the soul, the heart, and the character of a people. Not some messianic politician who will bring economic revolution or immediate political change in the name of pragmatism.