[shazeep]

hmm, my knee-jerk reaction is that neither side acts very honorably, at the government level. There are strong indications, if not outright proof, (IS attacking Palestinians?) that IS is just an Israeli tool. I can say that even landed Palestinians in Israel live in fear that their house will be next. As to this (pretty heinous) "resolution," i am not really qualified to speak, except to say that we often consider Arabs--or Muslims--one big happy united family, perhaps, when this is obviously not the case.

This conflict was foremost in my mind for years; i was going to write a book about it at one point; something from a "neutral" pov, perhaps...but the ending i would have had to write, after much reflection in Scripture, is that
1) it seems God has deemed Israel, and more specifically Jerusalem, the center of the spiritual world, on the physical plane.
2) Ishmael was blessed of God, and raised as a thorn, to contend with Isaac. Many, or some, might argue this irrelevant; yet i was led to it for an answer.
3) Things are not as we see them with our eyes. God's ways are not ours. I suspect, strongly, that this wound that will not heal is for a snare for men--to mutually deem the other side as evil, and fall into other traps, as men will. It also affords chances for believers to do the right things; bind up wounds, heal the sick, etc.

not much of an answer, i guess. i see that there may have been huge machinations, pre-wwii even, to bring about a Jewish state of Israel; yet they were tested by invasion early on, and God seems to have carried the day for them. While i can't help but see these crises as man-made, governmental--and thus satanic--machinations, designed to keep man enslaved, it is hard to not also see God's hand involved.

So at the end of the day, is it something that i can have an effect in? Or a snare that will pull me from the path? Again i will say that the only blameless ones seem to be the oppressed; and i would guess they are oppressed because at one time they were the merciless oppressors, possibly, though life pre-1948 in Israel does not seem to bear this out.