This sickening {yet salutory) discovery confirms what we already knew:
that the Israeli government plotted all along to tauntingly dupe the Palestinian people, in a conspiracy that's designed to provoke–as heckling and deception do–the most infinite, burning rage.

Like Bush's transparent lie, ("I have no war plans on my desk",) Israel shammed innocence, claiming that it was negotiating in the best of faith: that it simply couldn't control the accidental encroachment of radical [often American] Purgists. [I can't use the term "Settlers," because it's obviously contrived to legitimate Conquest, evoking the Anglo-Supremists who sacked all the American lands.]

Anyone who whines the question with which the American press brainwashed the U.S, public, "Why do they hate us?," should think about the effect of such Israeli-U.S. con-artistry. The cruelty of bullying–insulting, supercilious, brutal–provokes a corrosive sense of injustice in its object. The question we ought to ask is staggeringly opposite of the one above:

"Why have so many Palestinians NOT loathed the living daylights out of us?"

The capacity of so many of the Palestinian people for forgiveness, for striving mightily to remain humane and simply care for their families is breathtaking. Can our country say the same, in its lawless pursuit of vengeance under Bush?

The challenge for Obama, as so many have said, is whether he will negotiate with Hamas more honestly than Clinton and Bush did with the PA, or whether he'll wait till a more radical group, maddened by injustice, overthrows Hamas.

******
Also, Great News, possibly:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5636069.ece

Prosecutor looks at ways to put Israeli officers on trial for Gaza 'war crimes'

'When Palestinian groups petitioned the ICC this month, its prosecutor said that it was unable to take the case because it had no jurisdiction over Israel, a nonsignatory to the court. Now, however, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, has told The Times that he is examining the case for Palestinian jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in Gaza….

Palestinian groups have submitted arguments asserting that the Palestinian Authority is the de facto state in the territory where the crimes were allegedly committed….

Part of the Palestinian argument rests on the Israeli insistence that it has no responsibility for Gaza under international law since it withdrew from the territory in 2006…..

The case has wide-reaching ramifications for the Palestinian case for statehood. If the court rejects the case, it will highlight the legal black hole that Palestinians find themselves in while they remain stateless. However, it also underlines some of Israel's worst fears about a Palestinian state on its borders. A Palestinian state that ratified the Rome treaty would then be able to refer alleged Israeli war crimes to the court without the current legal wrangling. The case could also lead to snowballing international recognition of a Palestinian state by countries eager to see Israel prosecuted….

One avenue would be for Israel to agree to investigate its commanders and prosecute any crimes discovered. That would remove any case from the orbit of the international court. So far that appears unlikely, given Israel's repeated denials of war crimes in Gaza.'

The Civilizations moved on in the last few hundred of years with regard to due respect to the idea of property ownership.

Just because the area is barren (hey, maybe some people like it that way – the way nature intended it to be) and is owned by community/group/society/tribe/ does not give you or any other folk right to walk up, take it and exclude all others.

If you think it is such a good thing to do pick on someone your size and settle in one of the USA military bases – its owned by no individual and is often barren.

Let me know how you get on.

1) You conveniently (like many of your "tribe", to use your own word) chose to not counter my comments about how many people in Israel who claim to want to help Palestinians, are living in Palestinian homes in Baka or on what they consider to be Palestinian land in East Talpiot and French Hill (and elsewhere). And 2) You are assuming Palestinian ownership where there was no ownership. Unless of course you mean to say that all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan is by default "Palestinian". But we are used to obfuscation of a certain political/ideological ilk that doesn't wish to be bothered with the facts.

No wonder the Palestinians had to respond to years of provocation.

No wonder the settlements must stop if there is to be peace. Not only stop, but be reversed. You can't reverse a rocket but you can reverse a settlement.

Well, then they should redouble their efforts to compensate. Irregardless, they are infinitely superior to those who are currently living in stolen Palestinian homes yet maintain Palestinians have no land claims at all. The former are merely hypocritical; the latter are monstrous.

Nor can we reverse the massacres perpetrated by the Palestinians in the years before 1948, or before 1967, or after Oslo.

You're right. You can't reverse murder.