Well, Israelis are citizens of Israel, not the West Bank or Gaza. There really is no sense in talking to someone who really believes the Israelis have any "right" to build there. No one in any authority does, not GWB, not Colin Powell, not George Mitchell or George Tenet. Not Moshe Dayan, not Menachem Begin, not Barak, not the UN.

In Israel where the Palestinians are citizens, having lived there longer than the Jewish folks. That was a condition of the formation of Israel, to which the Israelis agreed.

Now, even though "citizens, Israeli-Arabs are not allowed to own or rent property in 92% of the country. Despite being "citizens".

What do you think would happen in the US, or France, if, say, Chicanos, or Afro-Americans, or Native Americans were not allowed to buy property in 92% of the country?

T. B. "Odd that I don't hear a lot of screaming about the current Arab citizens of Israel "settling" on Jewish land."

BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. There is blatant, all-encompassing racial discrimination in Israel. The world knows that, and the world also knows the US vetoes UN resolutions on that. In fact, the US walked out of a UN conference which dealt with human rights because the majority of the world recognizes Israeli racial discrimination.

Part of the reason the US was not voted a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission is the US support of Israeli racial discrimination.

Discrimination Against Non-Jews (Israeli-Arabs) citizens of Israel:

"Israeli-Arabs are discriminated against based on military service. Israeli-Arabs don't serve in the Israeli Army and most job applications require, implicitly at least, army service for employment. Also, "Arab towns and villages have been disadvantaged in the allocation of budgets and services, leading to wide gaps in development between most Arab localities and their Jewish neighbors" -- Alouph Hareven, Near East Report (AIPAC newsletter), 10/11/1993"

"The Christian population of (the ever expanding) Jerusalem was 30,000 in 1948; today it is 2000, due to the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from that and other areas around Israel. (Paul Findley's Deliberate Deceptions, 1996) Unlike Jews, Arabs are always denied a permission to build and expand."

"92% of the land in Israel falls under the Administration of the Jewish National Fund, where the land can not be sold to non-Jews. Result: the 18% Israeli-Arabs own only 4% of the land."

"If, say, a Peruvian converts to Judaism and emigrates to Israel, he immediately has more rights than Israeli-Arabs who have lived in the land for many centuries."

"Israel was among the countries cited for discrimination in the U.S. State Department's first annual assessment of religious persecution around the world. While Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Serbia and Burma were subject to some of the report's harshest criticism, Israel was cited for denying its Arab population the same quality of social services that the nation's Jews receive." The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (9/13/99)