Originally Posted by jayeff

I think you need to decide whether you want to claim that Israelis are more moral than other people, or whether you are trying to justify their sameness by pointing at examples of other countries' shortcomings...

And since you have mentioned Northern Ireland, it should be a warning as to where Israel is heading if it maintains its present policy towards the West Bank.

The problem of Northern Ireland in a nutshell is that it has a minority of citizens who are treated as second-class by the majority, to the extent that for example, two or three generations of a family might never have been employed. Since the divide is a religious one, there isn't the slightest chance they will ever become the majority via the democratic process. Even if there was the will and desire to do so, there is no practical way to split the country up and allow the Catholic parts to join Southern Ireland.

If the majority in Northern Ireland had any sense, out of self interest they would have done away with the inequalities long before bombs started going off. But they are like people the world over: selfish, self-centered, not very moral and not very sensible. Just like Israelis are doing, they kidded themselves that they could treat people like dirt, year after year, and crush those people into accepting that treatment. And when the Catholics started to fight back, instead of saying hey, we got this wrong, they again reacted like most people would have done and started talking about teaching the ingrates a lesson, etc, etc.

I lived in Israel for 10 years, so I know that the majority of people do not support occupation of the West Bank. But I also understand how finely balanced the Knesset is and therefore why extreme points of view carry so much weight. Unfortunately, when it comes to the West Bank, a compromise solution involving partial settlement is absolutely the worst option because it guarantees that Israel will face its own Northern Ireland scenario for years to come.

There are two ways for Israel to stop being an occupying force so that peace becomes at least a possibility, however remote. Either withdraw completely from predominantly arab-occupied areas, or go the route which Arik Sharon and several other ex-generals were proposing back in the 80's and drive the Palestinians out of the disputed areas.