Israel / Palestine

These numbers aren't nothing are they?

I agree Israel goes too far in its responses and there are clearly examples of behaviour by Israeli security services which are completely unacceptable. But it's also fair to say they are in a difficult position - there are significant numbers of people in Palestine who will attack Israel and seek to kill civilians. They can't do nothing. For those who paint Israel (the govt) as the clear villain, what exactly do you think they should do without putting their citizens at risk?

Clearly (to most outsiders at least) the end destination should be some form of the two state solution, but Israel will never disarm (it's a sovereign state and given the history of persecution against Jews, and the very real existence of many who don't accept its right to exist) that's probably reasonable. So Palestine won't entirely disarm either... How do you actually get to a peaceful settlement?

I just don't believe that "well if Israel stopped what it was doing to Palestine there would be no problem" is likely - even ignoring the real difficulties of getting Israelis to trust in it, where hundreds of years of history tells them that there will always be people who want to eradicate Jews altogether.

When you add the current reported figures of 1400 Israelis and 3000 Palestinians killed (though its figures announced by each countries authorities, rather than the UN or independent party)

8590 Palestinians, 1651 Israelis since 2008.
More Israelis were killed in one day than the whole of the second intifada.
Bit more than harmless...