I've been reading this thread with interest. I’ve never yet been brave enough to get involved in an Israel/Palestine discussion online, and find they tend to go round in circles, but here goes...
I've read so many books on the Middle East over the past 10 years or so, by Tom Segev, Amos Elon, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Eugene Rogan, Martin Gilbert, Izzeldin Abuelaish - and I still find it hard to retain all the information, keep track of the history, and to know what to think about the whole situation. There seem to be so many divisions of peace even within the peace camp in Israel; it's not a simple case of hawks vs. doves. Disclaimer - I have some relatives on my dad's side in Israel, though I don't know them very well; I've only been there for holidays. Mostly, if I had world domination, I would just like to knock both sides' heads together, and tell them to stop behaving like toddlers saying "they hit me first". I don’t think it’s fair to apply all the blame to one side. Both sides have committed atrocities. I despair of Israel sometimes, and also of the Palestinians. I do not agree with the illegal settlement-building in the West Bank and I have little time for religious extremists who think God is some kind of estate agent.
A few years ago we went on a trip to Nablus in the West Bank with Green Olive Tours. The owner, who's Scottish-Israeli, had an interesting, if idealistic, proposal for the region. He thinks the whole area - Israel, the West Bank and Gaza - should become two states modelled on the EU. Israel would be predominantly Jewish in character, but Palestinians would be free to live and work there with equal rights. The West Bank and Gaza (including all the illegal settlements) would be mainly Palestinian, but Israelis would also be free to live and work there.
My maternal grandparents (who weren't Jewish) were very left-wing and fervent supporters in the 1940s of the creation of Israel. This interests me because most of the criticism of Israel tends to come from the left nowadays and I wonder if my grandparents had been born 60 years later they would have become pro-Palestinian campaigners. Sadly they are now dead so I can't ask them more about their feelings at the time, or to apply the benefit of hindsight. I think their view was that the Jewish people, after all the anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust, not to mention the refusal of other countries to admit more Jewish refugees, deserved a home of their own. I think they thought that the Palestinian population could choose to stay there and live in a Jewish state, moving on from the British Mandate or the Ottoman Empire, or move to a neighbouring Arab country where they would become full citizens with equal rights (rather than still in a refugee camp 65 years later). Maybe they thought this would all be done without a War of Independence...I don’t know. I am sure historians will continue to debate Israel’s creation for years to come, but in the meantime I just hope that people can move forward to some kind of two-state solution and to stop the bloodshed in the region.