Israel has continued to build settlements in the occupied West Bank, maintained road blocks and terrorized Palestinians.  Israel governs the occupied Palestinian West Bank in an appartheid-like manner. Even now, home building continues and a high speed rail line is being built through what is supposed to become Palestine.

The USA wants to give Israel incentives to stop outrageous actions but in reality rewards present policies.  The reality is that we are further from the creation an independent Palestinian state than ten years ago.

At this point, Israel is no longer able to order settlers to leave the planned future Palestinian state; a civil war would be likely if, following an agreement, the settlers would have to be moved from the West Bank by the military.

The West Bank is now seriously considering to declare independence.  France, Spain, and other Western as well as Arabic countries support the declaration.  Israeli settlers, troops and police would hardly leave peacefully: war would be extremely likely.

Israelis and the Semitic Arabs are close relatives and their religions are similar.   Historically, Arabic and Jewish people got along fairly well.  Main differences between Israeli and Palestinians include: The Israeli immigrants absorbed much of the cultures where they lived for centuries (Eastern and Western Europe, USA, North and East African, etc.); for centuries they no longer spoke their Semitic language, intermarried and included converts in their communities; many are relatively wealthy and well educated.  The Palestinians are a much more homogenous ethnic group and they speak their Semitic language, lived in Palestine for centuries or millennia and are mostly very poor.  However, the two groups’ economies are intertwined, they need each other (e.g. Palestinian workers build apartments for Israeli in he West Bank).  There is no reason why conservative, reformed and agnostic Jews, Muslims and Christians and other minority groups could not find peace in a united secular, democratic Israel-Palestine, comparable to other multiethnic federal democracies, such as South Africa, India, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.

Summary by H. Aeschbach   www.humane-civilization.org