Middle Eastern politics and history is a minefield and in many ways all the protagonists in the Israel-Palestine conflict are victims. Fundamentally the problem revolves around the Palestinian refugee problem, those Palestinian's who fled their homes during the 1948 war and have been used by the Arab states as a weapon and have had right to return home denied by Israel. About the wars, that is also very mixed, in 1948 both sides had planned to cross the other, in 1956 israel attacked in cahoots with France and the UK, in 1967 Israel attacked, in 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked and in 1982 Israel attacked Lebanon, with continuos border skirmishing all the while. what is interesting about Lebanon is that initially Israel supported Syrian influence in Lebanon as a stabilising influence, also the original Israeli policing action turned into a full blown invasion by Ariel Sharon grossly exceeding his authority by ordering the army to close on Beirut rather than the plan agreed by the Israeli government to secure a buffer zone. Most accounts in the West and Arab world are so one sided that it is dificult to get a real debate on the issue, in the West most reports concentrate purely on Israel as victim whereas in the Muslim world they have a exact opposite bias, both being equally wrong,
Justin
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