Is this the same "hand" that recently tried to slaughter everyone in Lebanon?

Or the same "hand" that uses orchestrated murder as a political tool?

The Israelis NOW want prisoner exchange - the very thing that Hamas offered before the invasion of Lebanon !

Is this not a clear sign of a re-think? Their plan to get the US to wipe-out any local opposition has failed - and with Syria having greater influence on Lebanon (on their Northern border) and the Iranians about to join-up with Iraq (to the East) haven't they finally realised that their game is up?

Let's do a deal - before it's too late !!!!!!!

I don't feel qualified to reply at length over what is one of the most complex issues in modern times.
However, how would any other country react, had it been as beleaguered as Israel has been over the past few decades? It's enemies don't even recognise its right to exist.

<<< Beleaguered >>> ?

Not a word I'd use ! They have vastly superior weaponry and usually managed to kill in a ratio of 1:10.

Why should anyone recognise the "right to exist" of terrorists who seize another state?

Did the world recognise Iraq's right to Kuwait?
Did the world recognise Argentina's right to the Falklands?

Because it never should have. It was levered in in the 1940s as a dumping place for European Jews.

The indigenous Jews got along fine with the indigenous Islamic until the invaders came. Now the Palestinian Jew is now an ill regarded minority in their own country.

If they were black we'd be up in arms, but WW2 skewed what one can and cannot say about Israel...

If the US and the Allies had wanted a home land, then they should have provided the land, not forced other folks out of theirs...

Is Israel beleaguered? Well, the surrounding Arab states occupy 640 times the land mass, not including non-Arabic Iran whose leader advocates the removal of Israel from the map. Sure, they have vastly superior fire power over their immediate neighbours, but is that a de facto proof of right or wrong?

What is Palestine/Israel? Is it the Jewish state of biblical times, the outpost of the Roman Empire, part of the Ottoman Empire, part of the pre war British Mandate? Its ownership is hardly a black and white issue. And remember Palestine includes what became Trans-Jordan, then Jordan, three times bigger than Palestine and Israel now.

Palestinians are not ethnically distinct from Syrians, Jordanians or Lebanese.

I have never supported killing by anyone, including the Israelis, and consider the assassination of the excellent Rabin by a Jewish fanatic to be a political as well as personal tragedy.

I do however feel that Middle Eastern hatred of Israel is more to do with the agenda of the general " Arab Nation" and Islamism than Palestinian Nationalism, and trendy Western mistrust of Israel more to do with latent anti-Semitism than anything else.

Comment removed in light of comment below.

This happens on a regular basis - the Israel/Palestine argument tends to provoke argument I feel would be better expressed elsewhere after a few starting comments!

A complex problem not assisted by simplistic solutions.