Thanks greatly for all your opinions and observations, along with your voting in the poll.

This will prove very useful to me in my Political discussions and work at uni.
I would be interested in your opinion of the conflict Lizzie.

I knew somebody would raise that question with me eventually!!

As I stated when I started this thread, this is a
very deep long standing historical and political issue in this part that has suffered so much strife and conflict seemingly over the last 2000 year plus that Jesus was recorded on commenting on, and predicted it would last, at least in respect of Jerusalem until Judgment Day!

It is so embedded in the religious, political power, and yes land grabbing emotions of
all sides, that no one I believe can possibly come up with a simple solution, unless they are God / Allah.

Your early post to the thread Optimist came very close, in my humble opinion, to being a precise summary on the current situation, which I was very interested to see Cem agreeing with.
It has been also stated, I believe correctly, that this is, and probably always has been, far more than a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims, although both have had their extremists and "crusades" to convert the other!! I am in no way a theologian, but I have read both Holy Books, The Bible and an English translation of the Koran. As I understand it from my readings, and please would any of my Muslim brothers and sisters please correct me if I am wrong, but both Jesus (d. c33AD) and Mohamed (d.632AD) both preached love and forgiveness between men, and stressed killing another man was a sin. A point continually stressed by Islamic clerics and Christian leaders when discussing all the world's "religious" conflicts.
Therefore I believe, as others have stated, this latest conflict, and most previous ones, cannot be connected to religion, but instead due to land grabbing power politics, which on one side (Hammas) want the "Total eradication of Israel", and on the other (Israeli) the total security of their homeland, its people and way of life, but without Palestine / Arab influence anywhere, including of course Jerusalem.
God / Allah will eventually bring peace to the World, and especially the poor Middle East who's conflicts go back so far to at least pre-Roman times. None of us surely have the answer to the whole situation in this, or any part of the troubled World, and I believe that all we can do is pray for the eventual peace, love and understanding that both Jesus and Mohamed preached.
