sorry to disagree, but palestine was a nationality in about the same sense that texan is a nationality. or maybe more accurately, alaska; the place was a backwater of the arabian/syrian province, and arabs there intermingled freely with the surrounding peoples, not distinguishable by language, religion, clothing, names, or the other things that vaguely distinguish a nation. the trappings of nationhood, such as "the palestine post" newspaper, the palestine orchestra, were in fact established by the jewish immigrants, who were of course distinct and wanted their own things which they were used to from their lands of origin.

ironically, as the character of the region began to change as a result of the determination of the immigrants to build a modern progressive westernized nation, the character of the arab residents changed as well, as those who were attracted by this prospect were more likely to settle near the europeanized settlements of the immigrants while those were wished to retain their ancestral characteristics moved away. even more ironically, as the traditional arabs viewed the more "progressive" arabs in a bad light, which bode ill for them when jordan annexed the west bank in 1948.

but that's all just history; there is indisputably a palestinian nation now, forged in adversity, and whose "father of the nation" is yasser arafat, whatever else one may say about him. and as such, if one believes in the nation-state, then their pursuit of one is as laudable as any desire to extinguish the jewish nation-state is not.

well, here you've seen it the second time and your response to the views of a resident of gaza and an arab of egyptian origin that there are more critical crises in the world is to call me "assinine"? well, thanks for contributing to the peace process.

"Cluestick coming: when you have to characterize your opponents' position as being ridiculously simplistic and inhumane... it's a crystal-clear sign that you haven't thought much about your opponents' position, or your own."

ah, tis a double-edged cluestick, that.

it's not just that they let their daughter become a teenage single mother whose baby daddy is a shiftless thug wannabe whose mother deals drugs; i mean, the family is associated with a group who hates america, they pray with weird african holy men, they give their kids weird names, she can't speak proper english, they stick to people of their own race, they're gun happy; it's liberal reverse racism, if palin was white instead of black they'd never even have considered her for office, embodying as she does the dysfunction of too many black families.

sounds terrible. where did this happen?

of course, in israel, mostly, some wealthy turkish landowner sold their property to a jew or jews, and the folks who lived there had to move. that's pretty awful; happened to me twice. i didn't shoot rockets at the curent residents though.

that's aside from the folks who just sold their own property.

of course, even in the minority there were plenty of folks who got chased off their property or fled believing they had to, and they need to get compensated, and several thousand were, prior to the intifada. nowadays that kind of thing will get you killed as a collaborator, though.

i'm afraid you don't understand; the people currently running the attack are the moderates. they've been doing moderate things like dismantling settlements in the west bank, and making deals with abbas, and pulling back israeli security from west bank towns and turning them over to fatah security.

but that kind of thing isn't selling well right now to the population who is getting really itchy for some quick mimprovement in the perpetual war and is looking likely to resurrect the dread netanyahu from the graveyard of failed politicians where they buried him when he failed to improve things by being brutal; so they have to look unmoderate in the faint hope of getting reelected, because if netanyahu gets elected, he'll cancel any progress made.

so they bombard gaza, because they haven't got any peaceful prospects with gaza, and abbas is in fact going to owe them a favor for damaging hamas. the hamas leadership is playing along by ending the truce and sending more rockets over in order to provoke the attack, because the gaza citizens are getting tired of living in deprivation and beginning to ask why their leaders are not leading in deprivation; and if things begin to loosen up for the west bank, they will really turn on hamas so this fatah-israel thaw needs to get derailed. so hamas tosses a few rockets and israel launches a crackdown, and everybody wins except the gaza citizens, and they are the most powerless so they don't get a say.