I believe the sense will eventually prevail on all sides, but we have to prepare for a rough ride ahead.

I can't imagine what 'sense' is anymore, and I am tired of being made to equate the two sides, that each has to come to the table, sensitive to certain realities. The hardline, ultra-right-wing, death-to-all-and-we-want-Babylon-too crowd has been able to completely take over all discourse in upper level political Israel. It was always a major thread with a long term plan, sometimes obvious but left unstated, sometimes realized internally and shamefully never confronted...and always handled with extraordinary PR.

Putting the blame on Obama or Saddam or a butterfly over the Pacific is disingenuous...although I agree that GW and his hardline, right-wing death-to-all-and-we-want-Babylon-and-Israel-too crowd used the problem for their own 'Gawd can't come until Israel is an inferno' masturbatory dramatizations. But it didn't change the course of Israeli politics or change the horrors for the non-Jewish people who live in the area.

Whatever parts of Israel that was a beneficent dream of potential is now long gone. At one time perhaps it could be said that the Stern Gang et al did what they did, but it wasn't what most of the people wanted...they wanted to farm and build things...unfortunately, like the Europeans' who continue to survive on the fruits of their mass slaughters of the colonial period, there has been too much killing for anyone to not have their hands forever bloodied. And people don't look at their bloody hands, step back and say, "Gee, I did something wrong, I better make up the damage done and re-apply for admittance in the group that I so horribly let down." Rather, they say, "I was right, and I am going to do it again, and in spades, to prove that I was right."

If one looks around in a 360 degree circle, one can possibly find a solution that does not contain pain and misery for at least on of the groups invovled, but it won't carry with it the sense of privilege that the wackos want to impose upon a group of their genetic brothers. Including that as an acceptable premise and swinging the 360 degrees view from that point insures only pain.

Absence of sense.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland