Frag you are too much.

"If you don't understand colonialism, ethnic cleansing and the war for freedom, you can't understand Palestine." - Ilan Pappe

What you fail to understand is just how ingrained the hatred is in the minds of both sides. And that the violence is not the most pressing issue. The most pressing issue is that both sides fail to gain a wider perspective and/or question why the current situation stands as it does. They are happy to believe what has been told to them by their parents or political leaders. No matter where you hear something, or read something, it is going to be biased. Yet, it is your responsibility to understand and acknowledge that there will be bias, as with any source of information and therefore it is up to you to question it's reliability. This unfortunately does not happen, thus we are left with a perpetually open-ended conflict

The posts hooahguy made show this perfectly. He has obviously been given his views on the subject by his parents, and his parents would almost certainly be the same. Force fed opinion from an early age, without doing his own research and investigation to reach his own conclusions. Either that or he has undertaken a very one sided research effort.

Both Israel and the Arab states are to blame. BOTH of them. They both engage in unspeakable violence and blood-shed. Both have caused untold suffering on the other side, as well as caused suffering among their own people. Whether it's Israeli soldiers going into refugee camps and murdering innocents or bombing civilian centres with F16 bombers. Or whether it's Hezbolah firing mortars from Lebanon into Israeli settlements or suicide bombers blowing up buses. It doesn't matter. Violence against innocents, whomever they may be, is never justified. Especially not when the violence being carried out is thinly veiled collective punishment.

I implore everyone to read any of the works of Avi Schlaim, especially The Iron Wall, Ilan Pappe, Edward Said, Walid Khalidi, Richard A. Falk, Ella Shohat, Nur-eldeen Masalha, John Pilger, Benny Morris, Efraim Karsh, Shabtai Teveth, Norman Finkelstein, Daniel Pipes, Amir Taheri, Anita Shapira. (As a side note, reading the early work of Benny Morris and then comparing his viewpoint to where he stands now really shows how fickle human perspective is and how easy it is for people to be swayed from progressiveness to unadulterated bias.)

Disclaimer: For those of you that can't be bothered to find where my bias lies, I stand slightly pro-Palestinian.