Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to answer Harry in detail and with so much understanding. I for one wish you were Dennis Ross, etc. etc. I couldn't take exception to any of the points you raise. The bad news is that there are literally hundreds of 'illegal' settlements - all small, all keeping soldiers busy, and all a source of electoral strength for the right wing governments. As the current coalition is demonstrating, there is almost no party that is not right wing! Only the 'white' leftish Meretz Party and the Arab parties. In what you write there is also an assumption that there are statespersons in the Israeli political arena willing to take on responsibility for finding solutions. I see one or two only in the opposition - Do you know the names of Zahava Gal'on and Naomi Hazan? These are two women who have been stalwart in THINKING and saying what they think in the media as well as in the Knesseth. But the people who are running things waver between obedience to US diktats and sensitivity to what the radical right, namely the extremist Jewish fundamentalists on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip are urging them to do. Rabin seems to have been the last person to analyze situations and act to the best of his ability on the basis of his analysis. Prepared or not, he was assassinated.
By the way, you would have loved seeing a tv item where an ultra-orthodox Jew argued with one of the messianic Christians that they couldn't come "to be with us" because the blessing of the priests (cohanim) in the course of this feast at the Western Wall is a "Jewish affair only". Devorah
