A few weeks ago I posted some comments about Israel and there stupid land war. At the time, I was disturbed at the "casualty count" and how Europe distinguished the casualties between civilians and Hamas members (where civilians accounted for about 25%). Full disclosre, I am of Jewish heritage, but I also have resented, since 1989--when i saw first hand, how Israel treats Arabs and Palestinians.
I still don't have an answer for what is the right way, except peace, listening, learning from each other. It's heartening to hear of such stories starting to come out from Israel, the WEst Bank, and Gaza.
What sickens me now is this: A few days a friend posted on my facebook page, that he had heard from a gov't source that this war is about oil rights. Apparantly, BP, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Egypt have agreed on how to divvy up the oil and gas deposits off the Gaza shore. It sounded plausible to me, as it seems all wars are about raping the planet somehow, but after a brief google search of "British Petroleum and Gaza oil deposits" I found this article published in the NYTimes on Sept 15, 2000:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E6DB1038F936A2575AC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=allHamas was legitimately elected by the Palestinian people. And because they couldn't/wouldn't play ball according to the big boyz' rules, they were trampled upon by Israel with the tacit approval of BushCo, and most of the rest of the world.
Peace,
Robert Rex