After reading the whole thing, I wanted to add a few cents. This will delve into my views so if you don’t find those consequential, feel free to evade.

My sister is married to a man from Morocco. The first views that I ever heard on the Palestine/Israel issue came from him, and more brashly, my sister. Like my intellectual icon, Christopher Hitchens, I found myself likening the Israel/Palestine situation to the treatment of aboriginals in Australia or Native Americans here. Alot of leftists do this. I wrote some articles on it high school that got some Jewish students roiled up.

There are still strong arguments on the Palestinian side that are very strong but the issue has become much murkier for me. On one hand, I get mistaken for Jewish quite a bit. Alot, in fact. I’ve never had anyone postulate true hate at me but I’ve grown to detect these things. I’ve had several Muslim students at schools I’ve been at tell middleman friends that they avoided me or thought I was “pro-Israel” when I’d said nothing about the matter. In the same easygoing way that black jokes are made, Muslim friends have joked about be being stingy with money (I am very fiscally conservative but that has little to do with sectarian background). Nothing really offensive or upsetting has happened but the general attitude reminds me alot of the attitude of whites towards blacks in this country.

Likewise the treatment of Jews historically is similar. Just a quick look through Wikipedia will show that for hundreds of years, Jews were forced to walk on separate sides of street - daily humiliation quite similar to having to walk to the back of the bus.

If there is a solution for Israel and Palestine, I don’t think that it would be sect dominating the other. Both extremes are lobbying to create power structures that will benefit them and subjugate the other. You would need a leader to come about who would realize that this cycle of dominion is the core problem and that limits need to be made to make sure that one tribe isn’t trying to eat the other one. This has been tried in Lebanon to disappointing effect, if I’m wrong, but it’s worth trying again.