Just jumping in here to answer some things I was asked directly:
Fraidy You are conflating nationalism and nation states. The former is a political movement which asserts a nation state identity. I was very careful to make the distinction in what I said. The fact that there isn't an Uighur state (yet) doesn't mean that there isn't an Uighur nationalism and that Uighurs don't have the moral right to political self-determination up to and including possibly forming their own state one day. Whether such a thing is politically achievable given the politics of China and its military power is another matter. But do I think they have the moral right to try and achieve it? Yes.
I mean I assume we all generally support the right to political self-determination. Otherwise there wouldn't be a Scottish independence referendum happening this September, would there? So why shouldn't Jews in the ME also be able to assert their nationhood if they want to? And the Palestinians as well, as I said above.
BerryBerryXmas Judaism isn't directly comparable to say Catholicism because it is both a religion and (for the most part) an ethnicity with a well-documented historical homeland. That is why it has a nationalist component to it which other religions don't tend to have. Jewish people are overwhelmingly Jewish by descent from a historical Middle Eastern population. Even a non-observant Jew might still call themselves Jewish ethnically. Conversions to Judaism are relatively rare and for the most part discouraged.
runes Sinn Fein got more or less an effectively permanent slice of power under the power-sharing set-up. And they got other things that were important to them like prisoner release and effective immunity from prosecution for some paramilitaries. None of which I see as being directly to do with civic equality for Catholics - this is not to dismiss the fact that there was real and serious systemic inequality for Catholics in NI which should never have been the case and which was caused by and promoted by the state. But what I'm saying is that NI and Israel-Palestine are comparable in the sense that both sides had to swallow things they didn't like in order to get something. Sinn Fein and the PIRA had to realise in the end that the British state couldn't be driven out of NI by violence and that a united Ireland was not on the cards anytime soon. The British government realised that it had to deal with people it thought were committing unjustifiable acts, and give them a political place. Similarly in the ME, Israel will have to recognise a Palestinian state and not obstruct its development and prosperity. The Palestinians will have to recognise Israel and not allow themselves to be drawn into regional hostility with Israel.
It is made harder though by the fact that almost all the countries in the ME do not want to see Israel survive. They have no interest in supporting Israel and the Palestinians to broker a peace settlement, even though it would be better for Palestinian Arabs from a humanitarian perspective, because they would no longer have a rallying cause against Israel.