"Movement of people, especially students, the ill, aid workers, journalists, and those with family concerns, into and out of Gaza."
Only with the assurance that Israeli citizens will be protected. Gazans, after all, voted for Hamas, who want to eliminate Israel. Some say they had no choice because the Palestine party in the West Bank was corrupt (how unusual in today's world!). They made their choice.
I am for a 2-state solution but with assurance of the safety of the State of Israel.

Family were murdered in the Holocaust. To paraphrase Primo Levi, It's a psychic wound that cannot be healed (like slavery in the U.S.).

To get a clear picture of the situation there try Joe Sacco's Palestine.

@ Faith, two wrongs don't make a right!!

Save the children's of Gaza, please.

Despite any posturing to the contrary, no nation or entity in the Middle East poses a realistic threat to the continued existence of Israel. Israel has the fourth largest military in the world, and while it could not occupy the entire Middle East indefinitely, there is no power there that could pose a threat to its existence. And that's just with conventional weapons. With an estimated 200 nuclear weapons, Israel is in a position to literally level any other power in the Middle East. So while we cannot forget the Holocaust, its memory should not forever poison the prospect for peace. On the other hand, historian Gabriel Kolko claims that a successful conventional missile attack on the Israeli nuclear facility at Dimona would irradiate a good deal of Israel, and that both Iran and Syria have such weapons. If anyone knows this information to be false, I would appreciate hearing it. With or without that factor, the pursuit of peace rather than continued fear-mongering and emphasis on military solutions is the only reasonable and desirable course for Israel to pursue. The policy of settlements has made a two-state solution increasingly difficult, but it should be pursued. And when an 800-pound gorilla seeks to negotiate with a mouse, the gorilla must make the first move. In this situation, Israel's overwhelming military superiority makes it the gorilla. Israel should initiate negotiations to achieve lasting peace with a recognition of its position of real strength rather than from a concern with imagined weakness.

It is difficult to have any reconciliation when one suffers from raw memories of the past. The calamity is that it confuses the way we feel about the present. With family murdered in the Holocaust and Israel declared a Jewish homeland, it is hard to regard Palestinians as anything but a constant threat. The government has tried to keep them under control in every way possible with little success.
They need to be recognized as a state, but we should have a wall like the one being built by Egypt with a no-man's land between their side and ours.

I believe in two bi-national States, or even one bi-national State including current Israel, Philastina (Ephraim) and Jordan, with equal representation in the Knesset and in a Popular Assembly at Abu Dis, among Jewish Israelis, Muslim Israelis and Christian Israelis, and the same 3-faiths representation by Philastinians. And a Supreme Court of 24 Elders, 8 Jewish, 8 Christian and 8 Moslem, meeting in the Dome of the Rock. This is recounted in James Jacob's forthcoming book of som 470 pp."Peace Process in the Holy Land, World Peace and Justice and the Future Architecture of the Universe....", which holds the Philastinians to be the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and no more Arabs just because they mainly speak Arabic than Americans or Aussies or English, just because we speak English.

The book is available in an earlier proof on the web at wwww.powells.com for about $19.18 and from www.barnesandnoble.com in hardback for, as I remember, $37 plus S&H.

Who is not for peace? Unfortunately, the danger of wanting and working for peace up to submitting to impossibled demands (right of return etc.) must stop, because it means suicide, national and personal. As an Israeli I am unwilling to take all the blame for not having peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole. Whether one likes it or not, it takes two to tango. As long as the sole raison d'être of Hamas and Hisbullah, as written in their chartas, is the destruction of Israel and to turn it into a “judenrein” Islamic state, there is not to much sense prostrating ourselves to the world proclaiming our love for peace, especially to states and their "Führers" who only see this as our basic weakness, as history has shown over and over again. We have to work for peace, but not for the peace of the graveyard. We have to get out of the occupied territories but without having rockets shot at us as a thank you in the aftermath. Gaza has taught us that. Furthermore, I have a problem with people who are, safely ensconced in the USA (and Europe) who claim to know better what is good for Israel, without them taking part in Israeli life and without taking responsibility for anything. I have been at too many funerals of terror victims not to learn that. I am convinced that the large majority of Israelis wants peace - this was proven to me during the month before leaving Gaza, thought opposition was strong too and sometimes even violent. But that unilateral (there is nothing wrong with that) show of actually doing something for peace turned life in the Israeli region around Gaza into a living hell - and we have learned the lesson.

I just watch the tragedy of the situation unfolding day after day and cannot believe that some people find it God's intention. What is God, then?

I support this letter. It is critical that Isreal be required to commence meaningful negotiations.

We need concrete actions to invigorate the peace process between Israel and the PA. Action on that front will help Gazans to rid themselves of Hamas.