Originally Posted by Osnabrueck

I think both sides of this conflict are at a strategic stalemate. Isreal can't stand by and tolerate aggression from their neighbors, but at the same time, when they retaliate like this they only make matters worse. So sure, maybe you'll get back your kidnapped soldiers, but in the process you've killed tens of Palestinians, and made alot more enemies.

Since the Palestinians have no legitamate armed resistance, there's nobody to sanction when things go wrong. It just ends up being some guy in some house being bombed, and the rest of the neighborhood suffers for having these guys living with or around them. But how could you blame them, when the guys firing the rockets into Isreal espouse a popular view?

The conflict is intractable, so I suggest the entire region be tossed into a gigantic Glad™ bag and shipped to the moon, where they can settle their dispute without involving the rest of us, who are hard at work thinking about German cars and the like.