I must admit, I am on the side of pessimism. If you look at what is happening, rather than what is being said, it becomes fairly clear that Israeli policy is to end up with all the land in the West Bank. To this end, and to establish “facts on the ground” the Israeli government has been furiously building and expanding settlements, establishing army secured “outposts” throughout the occupied Palestinian land for the past 30 years. If you look at any map that overlays the West Bank Israeli settlements and the Israeli roads that connect them, you see only a possible “Swiss cheese” Palestinian state; a non viable, “sovereign” nothingness, completely dominated economically and militarily by Israel. Am I missing something?

If you say another solution is to have one state then you either have an apartheid state or a non Jewish state, and Israel, in either case, is defeated, either morally or politically by demographics.

If you say, as millions of Christian and Jewish fundamentalists do, that all the land belongs to Israel because the Bible says it does and are willing to drive all the Palestinians out of the West Bank, then you have a religious war with Christians and Jews fighting Muslims. That’s potentially about 2.5 billion people at war. The beginning of this religious war is all around us. Many of our friends and neighbors here in Lancaster would be happy to kill any number of Arab Muslims in a holy war to take back the land of Palestine that God gave to the Chosen people. If you doubt this reality, start taking a survey, structured, of course, to find out real attitudes. Any criticism of Israel is ferociously labeled Antisemitism, yet Anti Muslim fear mongering, hatred, demagoguery, and bigotry are widespread, growing, and unchecked by any significant political force. Of course “they” killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 but by that same logic, another “they” killed Christ.

The danger of religion has always been that the believer gets to “know” what God really wants (its all in the books) and to fight for that, to die for that, to kill for that (in defense of God, of course!) is great and noble effort that leads one to paradise. Christians and Jews may not get 70 virgins but we are all entitled to eternity in paradise for doing God’s holy will. We also get to kick a few butts which is great fun when you have a license and most of the guns. Am I missing something?