Palestine............

Well said him.

It is a far more complex situation than most people think. Yes, 1.8 million Palestinians live in Gaza. But how many people knew or even bothered to find out that there are 1.6 million Palestinians living in Israel? I don't think the last time I checked that they were being bombed.

One difficulty is, this is the Middle East and the people involved don't think the same way as we do in Western Europe. Just because an Israeli spokesman comes on radio or TV and appears to be intelligent and articulate in English still does not make him think like a European.

No-one, including me would disagree with that, but I think a lot of what has been said about Israel has been inaccurate. They did not set out specifically to kill civilians. Hamas on the other hand fired missiles randomly at Israel, and I wonder what carnage they would have created had they had more sophisticated or, perish the thought, chemical weapons no matter how crude.

I typed a detailed reply to you Arena and lost it when someone came into my office waving paperwork for me to sign, but I will try again though second time is never quite the same.

I am the most a-political person you are ever likely to meet and am neither Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian or Arab and have no connection with the area. I am also an atheist.

I too am appalled by the death of innocent civilians but the reason that some (not all) hospitals schools and other places considered safe were targeted was because Hamas chose those site to either launch rockets from, or they had groups of fighters in those houses. And in some cases they were very near by, because despite footage of laser guided bombs we have all seen which can blow the testicles off a gnat not all armaments are that accurate. Why do you suppose they intermingled their forces with the civilian population? Why when Israel broadcast that they were going to target a certain area did Hamas tell the people to stay put?

I get a little annoyed when I see 'protesters' on the streets here waving banners telling me that Jews are child murderers, many of whom do not understand that not every Jew is an Israeli, and more important, not every Israeli is a Jew. I am pretty sure that many of those people could not even point to Israel on a map. I happen to know one local councillor who went on such a march and she could not tell me where Israel was on the map, and I doubt she is alone.

Israel negotiated directly with Fatah and granted almost all the demands that were on the table, including the right of 30,000 Palestinians to return, and almost all concessions on land. The one sticking point was that Fatah refused to accept that Israel had the right to exist as a separate state.

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation throughout almost the entire world. Even so Israel has had indirect negotiation with them via Egypt, which has resulted in the shaky current cease fire.

As I have said, yes it seems that Israel has behaved with extreme violence, but faced with a daily barrage of rockets fired indiscriminately at them I don't think they had too much choice.

One last thing. I have been to that area, and spoken long into the night with both Palestinians and Israelis. As a Westerner I will never fully understand. It is a fabulously beautiful country brought almost to the point of barbarism by contemptible people on both sides. If they ever learned to live together in reasonable harmony it certainly would be the land of milk and honey.

A cordon sanitaire?

Then why do you refer to one country 'smuggling' weapons in. Whilst the other one is armed by foreign sypathisers?
What the present Israeli goverment is doing is ethnic cleansing and subjugation.

Hamas is there, like the IRA, because negotiation with certain factions does not work.
Building homes for your people in somebody elses land and refusing to leave,shows a total disregard for the inhabitants.