Hamas strike on Israel

You're overlooking that the UN partition plan was hugely controversial at the time and there was talk of threats, blackmail and even bribes from the Zionist lobby to try and get it over the line in the vote at the UN. It was definitely one of the most shameful episodes in UN history. It directly led to the horrific events of the Nakba a year later.

You support and seem to support the strategy of Hamas and the PLA to use violence in order to achieve a political aim, even though it has not worked out for them. Do you admit that this strategy was wrong and that they should have accepted some of the deals presented to them in the past?

Hold on there. I never said there should be collective punishment. My response was to a poster who thinks the current situation has recently manifested itself.

As to the Palestinians, given that they have not learned from past mistakes, do you not think they should learn?

I do not want people being killed, like yourself. But one has to examine the reasons why we are at this point. Otherwise one learns nothing and repeats the same mistakes of the past.

I would disagree.

The hostages are the primary reason and excuse that Israel has to keep fighting.
If Hamas released them all tomorrow, unconditionally, then the war would more or less stop and people would stop dying. If Bibi continued the war, then Trump would pull him up, like he did with the Iran ceasefire.

Hamas is a spent force, its military leadership all but dead, and it has lost control over the strip. It's easy for its leaders in the safety of Qatar to play with the lives of others, but that is what they are doing. Hoping for any salvation from the disaster of the October 7th attack that led to the destruction of their organisation. They are completely in denial of the situation and reality, much like much of the Palestinian leadership of the past actually. It's amazing how badly they have been led.

There is no reason for Hamas to keep fighting. They are like those old Japanese soldiers hidden in Jungles dotted in the Pacific, who kept 'fighting' well after 1945. They have been defeated.. time to move on.

It remains the case that if the Palestinians had accepted the 1947 plan, we wouldn't we where we are today.

This is ultimately the hard truth of the matter. The Palestinian delegation made a mess of it, they lived in denial, they thought their Arab mates would sweep Israel away, and they were wrong.

Israel had both the legal mechanism for their state via UN resolution 181(ii) and then the hard mechanism when they defeated the Arab invasion in 1948.

The problem is, the Palestinians kept repeating this mistake for the next 80 years, the question now is, will they keep repeating the same mistake for the next 80.

I can't see any peace in the region in my lifetime given the prevailing attitudes of both sets of the peoples there. Israel would do well to somehow negotiate a permanent peace when they are in the ascendancy. After all dont have to look to far in history to see that the English were winning in Ireland for hundreds of years but still lost in the end.

No doubt our brave apologists will justify the forcing of Palestinians into the Rafah Ghetto as being for their own good, in advance of a final solution.

So the palestinians are to blame for the westbank settlements. That's a new one.

The thing is, outside of Iran and the Iranian proxies, Israel has made peace and normalised relations with quite a number of Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Morrocco etc.

The big exception and the big problem in the region is Iran.