But picking up the weapons is just causing the Palestinians to die, because they kill Israelis, understandably, the Israelis try to kill them back, understandably, and the entire mess continues with all the concomitant suffering for Palestinians and Israelis, and a lot more for the Palestinians than the Israelis because Israel is a lot more powerful at this point.

The only way to force a win, rather than negotiate a compromise, is to suffer and die so much that people are so horrified that they intervene on your behalf instead of saying, "How about you just...don't cause yourselves to suffer and die so much?"

It's an absurd calculus.

I mean, it's absurd unless you have a God-given right to rule the land and as God's instrument you must never back down--you must keep trying until you succeed or you die.

Of course when you have two groups who think they each have the God-given rights to the same piece of land, it's a harder issue to resolve.

It's not like Palestine is the only location around the world where people have been forced to move as a result of war. The situation isn't always super-awesome (e.g. Kashmir). But you don't see Germans who were expelled from what is now Poland demanding a right of return to Poland. You don't see Poles demanding a right of return to Lviv. Lviv, despite being in Ukraine now and populated predominantly by Ukrainians, was Polish since the 14th century.

I cannot take seriously the claims about "but the mean Israelis will keep taking our land if we fight" when almost all the really large annexations came because they fought.

The Palestinians are in a rough spot: if they don't fight, their lot is not great. If they fight, it's far far far worse. Choosing the far worse option is deeply immoral because it dooms people who really don't have any power in the matter--children--to an awful fate instead of building the best you possibly can for them.

Israel is grossly failing at its obligation to find a humane solution. But this does not mean that the Palestinians and/or Hamas are not grossly failing at their obligations too.

You have indicated that the Palestinians' support for Hamas is reasonable in some sense. To the extent that we legitimize their support for Hamas is the exact same extent that we should condemn them for any excesses in action or ideology that Hamas promotes.

You've also indicated that there's no democracy in Gaza. Quite right: Hamas saw to that. To the extent that the Palestinian population is held hostage by Hamas, they are largely blameless for excesses in action or ideology that Hamas produces.

To unravel problems caused by intransigent people behaving violently and inhumanely, the best place to start is with the most violent and least cooperative party, and that's Hamas--whether or not you can empathize with their existence. Screaming at Israel to stop without having a sound alternative plan aside from the elimination of Israel as an entity isn't really

helping.