An Open Letter to the Israelis and Palestinians alike:
Hey--I realize that you've been at loggerheads for almost 60 years, and it's more than just a conflict over land. It's clear that religious and cultural differences, too, have been at the forefront of your decades-old conflict.

Israel: I know it's been a tough road for you to hoe-you've had a hard time just surviving and had to absolutely fight and prevail for your very survival due to the fact that, for the longest time, the countries surrounding you would not accept you, a jewish-majority, western-style nation-state, in their midst. Had you not fought back, you wouldn't have survived. That's very true, and, for a great long time, you commanded the respect of the international community because of that.

However, Israel, you've often overstepped your boundaries terribly. While I understand that you were threatened, even back in 1967, and you launched a pre-emptive strike in self-defense when threatened by three hostile Arab armies that were positioned on your borders ready to attack you, the tiime for you to make peace and give West Bank, Gaza and EAst Jerusalem over to the Palestinians is long, long overdue. Moreover, the building of settlements on their land, on your part, israel, is not only ethcally not right, but it's illegal, to boot.

West Bank, Gaza and East jerusalem do not belong to you, Israel. You have no right to build settlements on those lands, to demollish Palestinian families' homes, subject the Palestinian population to humiliating checkpoints, separate them from friends and loved ones by your settlements, or to deprive the Palestinian civilians of food, water, electricity and medical care. That's a gross violation of human rights. Israel--you cannot keep an angry foreign population under martial law like this and survive.

All this being said, Israel, it's important that you exist as a Jewish State. and we know you came into existence for legitimate reasons. In order for you to survive and preserve your Jewish majority population/character, you absolutely must withdraw your troops and evacuate your settlers from West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem now, and stop the daily incursions into those territories. Collective punishment on innocent men, women and children doesn't help you, Israel, anymore than it helps the Palestinians.

Maiming and killing innocent Palestinian civilians is wrong, also While I understand the reason for your building the wall--suicide bombers, you should only build the wall along the Green Lilne!!. Don't make the wall go into Palestiian territory That is wrong!!. Please cease and desist and once!! Thanks. The Palestinians need and want their own state alongside you. I also don't think that running over the late Ms. Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer was right, as naive and foolish as she may have acted.

Palestinians: I know that you also have a point, and that you, too have a right to some land, and to have an independent, sovereign Palestinian nation-state of your very own, but it has to be alongside Israel, and not in place of it, the way tons of people want. Palestinians, the best you can hope for is a mini-sized, independent, sovereign nation-state of your own, alongside the Jewish state of Israel, and comprised of West Bank, Gaza Strip, with Arab East Jerusalem as its capitol. However, do not think for one minute that Israel, as as harsh as her occupation of West Bank, Gaza and EAst Jerusalem which are rightfully yours has been, is the only one who is to blame here.

The Arab countries, too, bear a great deal of responsibility for your predicament of oppression and statelessness, as they refused to accept israel's existence, deliberately and knowingly kept you in squalid refugee camps, and deliberately lead you Palestinians on with all kinds of honeyed promises about how the then newly-formed State of Israel back in 1947-1948 would be destroyed by the Arab world's victory and that you Palestinians would once again go back to the land where you once lived. The Arab countries constantly made war on the then newly-formed, fledgling State of Israel back in 1948, and constantly exploited you as a pollitical football for that purpose, instead of letting you have your own independent state alongside Israel in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, Palestinians, you did not help matters any, since many of you committed nasty acts of your own against the State of Israel ranging from cross border raids even before their military occupied you, to hijacking Israeli El-Al aircraft, to acts of terror such as the 1972 Munich Olympics incident where your leaders sent some of you to Munich to slaughter 11 Israeli athletes, and your attempt at something similiar at Entebbe, Uganda, which Israeli commandoes successfully foiled. Had you and the rest of the Arab world accepted the two-state solution from the start, you and israel would be living in separate, independent states side by side today, with Jerusalem as a shared capitol of both the states of Palestine and Israel. Your more recent suicide bombs inside Israel, going into Israeli pizzerias, discoteques and wedding halls and blowing up, killing and/or maiming innocent israeli civilians hasn't helped you either.

Israelis and Palestinians--I'm sorry to say that your leaders have sold you out disgracefully. It's unfortunate, and that's why there's no peace today. The United States, the European community, and other institutions who should be helpinig to get you both out of this deadlock and iimplement the necessary two-state solution haven't been doing their job, and it's also u nfortunatel
Everybody should get to work--damnit!!

Israel-- like most people who criticize and condemn what you're doing, I care about you and want you to exist as a Jewish state, even though I'm secular.
I'm criticizing you because I want you to continue to exist.

In America, nothing is impossible.

by: mplo