The reality is that the Geneva Accord is a non-governmental initiative – it has no obligation on either government, nor has either government seriously engaged with it or adopted it. 

A couple of MK’s and former Palestinian parliamentarians does not a viable solution concerning refugees make. 

The reality is that no Palestinian leadership will make a peace treaty which sells out the refugees in Lebanon etc because they would not survive the conflict which would arise with those factions.

As to Islam – Jews have almost always had dhimmi status in Islamic lands.  Considering that the overwhelming majority of the region’s states are undemocratic and don’t respect human rights, equality etc and have legislation in accordance with Islamic values, what hope in the world do you have that minority rights will be respected concerning Jews?  Check out Iran for a case in point.  You can’t even live tolerably as a Christian in the region without mild or outright persecution nowadays eg. Egypt, Iraq come to mind).

As to the secularists in Palestine - much like the Islamic revolution in Iran they will be eliminated when the religious people get control of the armed forces, judiciary, etc.  What happened to the communists, trade unionists, feminism, intellectualism etc after Khomeini secured power? 

Even the best case scenario – where the religious people can’t decisively wipe you out eg. in Lebanon, they can still refuse to disarm eg. Hezbollah and damage the state and all the secularists through policies which achieve nothing positive (eg. 2006 conflict).

As to Tony Klug–he does take up the religion issue-what he claims is that in the particular circumstances here, Islam has been particularly inflamed in the circumstances, but there is not essential in the hatred (or more essential than existed in the churches over the centuries). The hatred is not eternal, and as we know, Islam has tended to be more ‘tolerant’ than the churches, though I would not put up for a minute with any dhimmi status: societies have gone too far down the track. You also forget that there is a strong secular streak in the Palestinian movement (the hamas-fatah split) which includes many Arab christians (who are a minority under attack, as we all know).

However I note that in his piece he makes no mention of an important factor of a peace deal - the right of return of refugees. 

No Palestinian government of any shade will make a peace deal without securing the return of the refugees – and we aren’t talking return to pre-June 1967 Palestine either – we are talking about a return to Israel which would alter the state dramatically – and in my opinion not for the better for anyone involved.

It is also interesting how Klug doesn’t mention that the Arab Initiative 2002 specifically refers to the refugee issue.  He simply seems to ignore this issue because it is inconvenient to his narrative.  Good luck explaining to people nurtured generationally on their right to return to their homeland since 1948 and still holding the housekeys of houses in villages which haven’t existed in over half a century that they have to give up their dream to return to what essentially will be a particularly wretched aid-dependant state probably run by religious extremists (Hamas).

And Klug also doesn’t mention the religious dimension of the conflict – again, because it is impossible for him to understand the mind-set of extremists who genuinely believe that they have a religious duty to liberate the country from non-Islamic rule with a view to establishing a religious state – you can’t negotiate with people like that because it is a total sum game for them.

My 2 cents anyway.

Expecting diaspora jews to shut up and agree with whatever an Israeli government says, stikes me as a bit silly. In fact, what it will do is bolster whatever the Israeli government wants to do. For example, going back to the early 1990′s when Shamir was in power, he took the US jews’ diapora apparent support for not negotiating back then with the Palestinians or building more settlements, as proof that diaspora jews agreed with him, when privately many did not, and that only encouraged him in purusing those policies.

Criticism of Israel may in fact be disproportionate, but in the end of the day, I am not that interested in this. I’m far more interested in focussing on actual Israeli policy and asking whether in fact it is good for Israel or not. This too me is a far more healthy discussion for diaspora jews to have rather then getting bogged down in debates over the left and the media’s biases.

Larry Stillman and his AJDS mates may indeed write about injustices around the world where tens of thousands of innocent people are murdered where any form of dessent is met with torture and jail, but they disproportionately target Israel, as if it was the world’s greatest criminal.

I am against collective punishment and disproportionate use of force as much as the next bloke, but when Israeli towns have rockets and Iranian missiles (fired by Palestinian militants) raining down on them, action has to be taken. Hamas got the result they wanted: They sacrificed many civilians for world sympathy. If Israel can knock off one Hamas terrorist and thus save many lives, including Palestinians, it really has no choice.

The hypocrasy abounds when 1000′s come out to protest George Bush – a freely elected leader of a democracy - but not Hu Jintao, a dictator who crushes dissent (cf Canberra 2005).