"Yes, but on the other land..."

Jonathan and Gail-Tzipporah are concerned that a critical mass of Palestinians isn't serious about peace with Israel. They may be right. I spoke to a Palestinian college student in New Jersey recently who said a two-state solution would be wrong, because only a return to her family's pre-1948 home would be meaningful. Anything else in her mind was tantamount to American blacks making peace with slavery.

I told her she was nuts, because she was facing a losing battle and should move on. She said she'd rather lose while fighting the right battle than win while fighting the wrong one. I worried for our world.

I frankly think most people in that part of the world are unreasonable when they list out reasons why "we were here first" or "God prefers us to them." But this is the dilemma I'd love to hear my FF colleagues address. If the status quo endures, Palestinians and Arabs in the disputed and occupied territories will soon enough outnumber those who want a "Jewish state." What then? Can you afford to say, "They get no nation because they don't deserve it"? Do you need to force a nation on them anyway, so that the Israeli democracy isn't rigged in favor of those who may want to abolish it?

And... if all this is such an intractable mess that will only get more demographically and politically and religiously messy, then shouldn't we as good Americans get the heck out of this rotten, crazy conflict?