I have to answer two of my most effective critics in this thread, gipper and Mr. Perspective.
domer, I obviously wasn't giving a solution when I rebutted Mr. P's belligerent "solutions" to the problems, and I already realize that what began as a simple dispute over land has taken on many layers of complexity due to subsequent events and new actors climbing on board. Sometimes you don't know the way out but you can instinctively recognize when somebody is taking you in the wrong direction. Mr. P's "solutions" to the problem are just a recipe for collective suicide. Even if I don't have the way out, I know the general direction and that is respect and conciliation.
Mr. P, if you enjoyed a position of natural strength and overwhelming tactical and strategic superiority, your ideas, while morally reprehensible to any decent human being, would at least have had the dubious merit of practicality. As things stand, they can't even claim that. Israel is an isolated island of what is now unofficially probably seven or eight million people in a Muslim ocean, about 10% of whom reside permanently outside the national borders. The neighbouring "friendly" states are ruled by U.S.-backed dictatorships about as popular with their own subjects as the Shah of Iran was with his, and probably no more stable. The neighbouring unfriendly states are beset by various divisions amongst themselves, but seem to be capable of recognizing the common threat presented by the U.S. and Israel, with reasonable prospects of working out their own differences in the face of a common enemy. For the time being, the Israelis appear to enjoy a fast-eroding advantage in military technology and a unipolar world, although as we speak, I believe the Russians are renegotiating a re-opening of their old naval base at Latakia, which they haven't used since the days of the U.S.S.R.
Your threat to eliminate four (or was it ten?) Syrian divisions with one Abrams tank brigade made no sense to me. Even though the Israelis use Merkava battle tanks, which I understand are armoured with the roughly the same type of armour as the Abrams tank, the Iranians and the Hezbollah now have Iranian missiles which can penetrate the Merkava's (and presumably the Abrams' as well) armour, so, lotsa luck. Similarly, your threat to strike at anything within a thousand yards of the rocket launch was just crazy - - although the Israelis claim that Arab civilian casualties are the fault of the guerrillas who fire from populated areas, there's no real way of verifying that, and the fact is that the rockets don't HAVE to be fired from populated areas, they can be fired from literally anywhere. So that nobody would ever get killed by the counter-fire unless for some reason the Hezbollah wanted them killed by it.
I'm a big fan of a powerful defensive Israeli army. I don't believe in trusting the Arabs on their word alone and I don't know that there is a peaceful way out. All I know is that your way is extremely short-sighted, will lead (at most) to a few short-term victories and will bring down a shit-storm of ruin sooner or later. Peaceful overtures, respect, conciliation may all be too late and may - - as you yourself point out - - bring a rocket up the ass. Still and all, my way gives them a chance to find a way out and yours doesn't.
