The Independant newspaper piece is of course an intresting read but if Israel stopped the bombing would Hamas stop the rockets. Its only a personel opinion but I somehow think not.

I don´t usually get invloved in these kind of forums because it seems like whatever your opinion is you are never going to win the arguement, but just consider the following....

Lets say that today all the Israilies dissapeared and left an empty space which is now called Israel. What do you think would happen?
For me there are two scenarios:

Scenario 1..

The people of Gaza and the West Bank have a huge party to celebrate their freedom.
The next day the international aid starts flooding in and over the next decade the Palestinians build a green and pleasant land, like Israel currently is, throughout the territory. The economy booms, housing, roads. schools and hospitals are built, everyone prospers and we have a piece of eutopia in the middle east.

Scenario 2..

The people of Gaza and the West Bank have a huge party to celebrate their freedom.
The next day Hamas and Fattah restart their internal conflict because as usual they can´t agree on anything and don´t seem happy unless they are having a war with someone.
Within 12 months the green and pleasant portion they have inherited turns into a devastated war zone like Gaza and the West Bank and the whole place becomes a series of factional strongholds with alliences to whoever. The whole place then comes to depend on international aid, mostly European, in order to survive while it looks for somewhere else to point the finger regarding its current plight.

Now think about it and yourself a couple of questions...

Which scenario would the world like to see..easy answer.
Which scenario do you realistically think would happen...

I suppose what I´m trying to say is that regardless of who does what there does´nt seem to be a way out of crisis for this area. And this not intended to be a pop at either side.

just eat another pie