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What you said, was the road of Oslo. Even better, no walls, come in and work if you want! Israel was even collecting taxes and was passing them to PA in amounts exceeding $500 mln/year. Oslo was designed to have the Palestinian state at the end of the gradual transition, with more land at each step. Settlements would eventually be removed, as they WERE removed form Sinai after the Camp-David agreement with Egypt. They were uprooted and moved out, despite their protests. Barak was elected for "peace" if you remember. About half of Jews in Israel supported Oslo all-the-way. With peaceful PA proving the point, another half would be convinced or voted over. (They do vote there, as you know, including Israeli Arabs). The settlements are not an obstacle on the great scale of events, just an excuse.

And, how about accelerated peace talks at the Clinton's last hours: Everything was theirs for taking, but Arafat could not take YES for the answer.

I don't want to sound like I always agree with Israel. They had enough of stupid moves as I see that. But the key point was always this: don't touch us, we won't touch you. When did Israel live without a threat from Arabs? Never. It was posted around here somewhere: even now majority of Israeli Jews would support establishment of Palestinian state; majority of Palestinians support suicide bombings.

You decide.

I don't want to be defending the Palis here. I simply believe all humans are entitled to live with dignity, liberty, and self-rule in their birthplace, and a US ally should not be in the business of depriving people of these rights through military occupation.

Having a no-wall Pali State that cooperates with Israel in taxing is not a good idea. I simply don't trust the Palis enough. I say give the Palis a state, put a wall around it, and let them know that so long as the new state is not a launch pad for terrorist actions, their leaders need not fear for their lives from Israeli retaliatory strikes.

If they behave, in due time, Israel, through her democratic process, can decide to extend work visas, perhaps subject to passing rigorous background and/or polygraph checks.

The settlements are not an excuse. I believe all humans have a right to live with dignity, liberty, and self-rule in the land in which they were born. The dignity component means that they don't have to deal with immigrants coming in and enjoying more rights than they do, backed by an army that is occupying their land, running checkpoints, controlling their lives, with zero accountability to them.

In the US, we have armed people who have the right to detain and arrest us (aka police). But they are accountable to us through the judicial process (we can sue them) the political process (We can vote out their chief) and the legislative process (we can pass laws to restrict their power). On top of that, we have the right to bear arms.

Imagine if the armed police had no such accountability to us, we had no right to bear arms, and the armed police kept bringing immigrants into our country.

We wouldn't like it, would we?