I will absolutely, abjectly have to agree with you, and that unless one additional factor is considered the troubles over there don't make any sense

That "peace" is this situation: The Israelis in civil control of the Palistineans, enforcing Israeli will with the Israeli Army, AND the Israelis keep occupying more and more of Palestinean territory by building villages.

An analogy would be if the US occupied Canada with our Army, but left most of the police matters to the Canadian authorities. Then we started building roads into, say, Quebec, taking over Canadian lands. We build a few from Montana north, taking over Canadian farms, and from Washington taking forests. We completely expropriate the the land, taking the property and forcing the Canadians to leave those areas. (A little simplistic, but the basics are there. It's an honest analogy, but an analogy.)

Sooner or later the Canadians would get a little irritated. But, since our Army occupied Canada, there would be effectively nothing they could do about our encroachment. The world would be happy and regard the area at "peace" if the US continued the encroachment as long as the Canadians did nothing.

If the Canadians started raising hell about it, then the US could accuse them of "breaking the peace", and take the moral high ground.

No one denies the Israelis occupy the Palestinian lands with their Army. No one denies the Israelis are building kibbutz's illegally, and the US from time to time urges them to stop.

No one denies the Israelis regard the right to build those kibbutz's as given to them by God, not to be denied by mans' treaties.

No one except for some Israelis denies the Palestinians in this regard have a justified grievance.

And, "peace" in this area for the Palestinians is a return to Israeli Army occupation and control of their civil life, with continued encroachment by Israel in the form of more and more settlements built on Palestinian land. To try to redress the situation, the Palestinians, by definition, have to "break the peace".

What's a Palestinian to do? Is it "right"? Would you or I do the same thing? I don't know that I have the courage, wish I would, knowing "courage" is in retrospect, and opinion of others.

I do know that in my opinion, safely tucked away in a far corner of a round Earth, that mans' treaties should have precedence over a rigid interpretation of the Old Testament, that any God worth having is interested in all His children, not a few.

And, it's a tough situation.

Arf