The raging debate in your letters column between Israel cynics and "the pilgrim faithful" is amusing but sad.
The Christians are never going to be persuaded that Israel, as I believe, behaves as a rogue state responsible for the merciless slaughter of thousands of Palestinians under the leadership of Netanyahu and the other Israeli Prime Ministers before him. I would suggest that this is because they believe that the Jews are God's chosen people (meaning they can do what they like and it must be God's will), so whatever the crime, they look to excuse the appalling behaviour.
It's impossible for Palestinians to negotiate, no one "negotiates" with Netanyahu, in a normal give and take manner, it's only his way and he cares not one bit for global condemnation of his assault on Palestinians as, I believe, he has American neocon Zionist Jews politically behind him and the hoodwinked US taxpayer haplessly funding him to the tune of billions of dollars each year calculated at about $US11 million each day.
With a newly signed pact between Israel and Washington for $US38 billion over the next 10 years it's not going to stop any time soon.
I suggest that anyone wanting to see the truth of the just how much Palestinian land has been stolen by the Israelis since 1946 should simply use their home PC and google "Palestine map-loss of land" to see that Palestine has virtually been wiped from the face of the earth already, land confiscated, buildings bulldozed and any Palestinian commercial activity on a daily basis continually frustrated by the Israeli military such that Palestinians starve in what was once their homeland.
Once more the spineless United Nations, simply an arm of US foreign policy, has for years proven gutless in stopping Israel committing atrocities against Palestine, the fact that the US voted against the recent resolution a mere hiccup as Obama seeks to spite incoming President Donald Trump having a smooth transition by giving his political adversary Netanyahu the two fingers and also attempting sabotage of the likelihood of friendly relations between Trump and Putin.
Obama's sign-off is all sour grapes and admission of failure of his presidency. Only Jimmy Carter ever came close to sorting Israeli-Palestinian differences and he ended up despised by the neocon establishment that he described as the ruling oligarchy in America.
More importantly is understanding the bigger picture of war in the Middle East and the Zionist plan for greater Israel. Also known as the "Yinon Plan", according to the founding father of Zionism Theodor Herzl, "the area of the Jewish State stretches: "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates."
According to Rabbi Fischmann, "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon". This is being played out now with the destruction of Iraq and now Syria by the US backing the al-Qaeda rebels as they have now openly admitted.
So the likelihood of any resolution of this issue is simply not going to happen, any Arab state left standing is going to come under attack either by Israel itself or by Israel's lapdog, the United States of America.
- Malcolm Eves is a retired Hawke's Bay financial adviser and runs a blog called Kiwiwatch. Views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion, and not the newspaper's.