Peace in the Mideast will not happen

After 2000 years of being in exile, a people -- ripped and nearly extinct by the most evil of powers -- finally found peace in a land they could call their own. Not only their own, but open to all whowished to feel free. All they desired was acceptance as a nation, race, creed, ethnic group and religion. The area in 1947 known as Palestine provided a tangible place for that hope. \nTwo years after the Allies liberated the surviving refugee Jews in the concentration camps of the Holocaust, Great Britain controlled the area of the world then known as Palestine.\nThe British decided to divide that imperialistic holding into two halves, Palestine -- which included the Old City of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza strip -- and a section for the Jewish refugees who declared it the State of Israel in May 1948. That section included the western seaboard (where Tel Aviv is located) and the Negev Desert.\nShortly after David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, announced the birth of the sovereign State of Israel (Medinat Yisrael in Hebrew), armies of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt attacked the small country in hopes of destroying it.\nAfter a long, difficult war with these countries, Israel -- a country less than a year old with no formal military and no funding or support from any other place in the world -- defeated its opponents.\nIn 1967, the same armies attacked Israel again and lost within six days -- again. In that loss, Israel acquired the lands in the West Bank including the Old City of Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Desert.\nWhen able to occupy and become one with the holiest city on Earth again, Israel was complete.\nIn the early 1970s on the holiday of Yom Kippur (the holiest holiday for the Jewish people), the same Arab armies attacked again in hopes of obliterating the nation of Israel and again, after much blood shed, Israel won.\nIn the late 1970s, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat and President Jimmy Carter met and created a peace between Israel and Egypt. Israel returned the Sinai Desert as a sign of goodwill. Peace has lasted.\nThroughout this period of 52 years, a fairly large population of Arab peoples has occupied Israel. These people (mostly Muslim) are what we know as Palestinians. These are people who were in the former Palestine, who are not Jewish, do not wish to be part of the recognized State of Israel.\nIn Israel, these people live in conditions better than any other Arab country (save maybe Kuwait); they have religious freedom (as opposed to Kurds in Iraq) and they can be citizens and members of the government if they choose. They live in neighborhoods with such simple luxuries as internal plumbing and sewers, while many of their Arab cousins in neighboring countries do not.\nWhen Israel was made into its own country, these people were welcomed with open arms into the population by the Jewish majority. They refused. When the surrounding Arab nations attacked, Israel protected them.\nWhen they sought acceptance into Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt rather than live under a Jewish majority government, those countries refused to let in their own countrymen and cousins. But Israel still accepted them.\nNow, peace talks are halted by terrorism and unnecessary violence. Two soldiers took a wrong turn into a Palestinian neighborhood and paid for the mistake with their lives, their bodies desecrated. A country that has for years wanted a peaceful co-existence is not going to have that because peaceful co-existence was and never will be an option for the Palestinians.\nI'm not an advocate of using unnecessary military force to keep the peace, but I am not an advocate of terrorism.\nThe Palestinians, like most of the Arab nations surrounding Israel, want and have wanted only one thing: the destruction of the State of Israel.\nWhat stops another full blown war? Israel has the best and most powerful army in the world next to the United States. Why does the United States not support Israel the way it should? Because of a minor, valuable commodity drilled in those surrounding Arab countries.\nThe intention of the Israelis has always been one of keeping the basic right that we hold dear in America, while trying to co-exist with their neighbors and Palestinian citizens.\nPalestinians refuse to recognize Israel and the Jewish people's right to live there. Therefore, peace can never truly happen in the Middle East.