"It seems like any conversation I get into about this conflict inevitably comes back to harsh criticisms of Israel."

Well, should we criticize the Palestinians for protesting their own military occupation? Or their house demolitions, the destruction of their olive groves, the continuation of Ariel Sharon's "dunam by dunam" technique for wresting lands from the Palestinians, the ethnic cleansing that continues, and the ways often deadly in which Israel has gained control of 42% of the West Bank?

Those damned Palestinians! Sorry to be snarky here, but I'm just not getting your point.

"But let's not pretend that the Palestinian side of the conflict has been purely the victim."

No one is suggesting that Palestinian violence is an approved way of dealing with the killings of their own kind. But what is the responsibility of the victim of military occupation? Or of colonization? Is that person at fault for not acquiescing to the stealing of his home and land? Is he at fault for not just leaving his home instead of fighting back? To your amazement, at least 100,000 Palestinians have left the West Bank each year since 1967 because they are unable to subsist, to support their families.

Before you begin blaming Palestinians for their situation, which is what you are doing, read this material:

This material is quoted by Lawrence of Cyberia about Israel's targeting of civilians and children. Here you have a occupying military force attempting to colonize another people's lands, while Israeli soldiers are given orders to take out Palestinian civilians.

Palestinian deaths during the first and second Intifadas were not unintentional collateral damage. It was terrorist murdering by an occupying force.

Israel's claim that its soldiers adhere to a doctrine of "purity of arms" in dealing with the Palestinian civilian population has been going on for a long time. In the first intifada, Ehud Barak was the IDF's Deputy Chief of Staff, and proclaimed: "We do not want children to be shot under any circumstances ... When you see a child you don't shoot." That was untrue then, just as Bradley Burston's insinuation that Palestinian civilian deaths aren't intentional is a lie now:

The Swedish "Save the Children" organization estimated that "23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the [first] intifida," with nearly one‐third sustaining broken bones. Nearly one‐third of the beaten children were aged ten and under. It also states that 6,500 to 8,000 children were wounded by gunfire during the first two years of the Intifada. Researchers investigated 66 of the 106 recorded cases of "child gunshot deaths." They concluded that: almost all of them "were hit by directed ‐‐ not random or ricochet ‐‐ gunfire"; nearly twenty percent suffered multiple gunshot wounds; twelve percent were shot from behind; fifteen percent of the children were ten years of age or younger; "most children were not participating in a stone‐throwing demonstration when shot dead"; and "nearly one‐fifth of the children were shot dead while at home or within ten meters of their homes."

-    cited in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (chapter 2, end note 49); by Mearsheimer and Walt.

That's how the IDF killed Palestinian civilians - children - during the first intifada. Not through a careless use of missiles or the occasional errant tank shell, but by individual Israeli soldiers pointing their guns at children in the Occupied Territories - even children under ten, even children who had turned their backs and were running away - and shooting them dead.

And the IDF's record in the second intifada is much worse. Firstly, because the IDF announced in March 2003 that it would no longer routinely investigate the deaths of civilians killed by Israeli soldiers, but would allow individual Israeli officers in the field to decide whether to call in the Military Police whenever their troops killed a civilian, or to simply declare the killing an "unfortunate incident of death", which required no investigation. A policy that has had the following, entirely predictable, result:

The IDF effectively grants immunity to soldiers who open fire illegally. Since the beginning of the intifada, the IDF has ceased to automatically open an investigation into every case in which a Palestinian is killed by IDF fire. The decision as to whether to open a Military Police investigation into each incident is now made by the Judge Advocate General's office, based on the results of the field de-briefings, which are also carried out by the army itself. In one case that was exposed by B'Tselem, it was clear that an eleven-year-old child had died as a result of the violation of procedures and illegal shooting. Despite this, the Judge Advocate General's office decided not to request a Military Police investigation. In addition, the investigations that are opened are generally protracted and based primarily on soldiers' testimonies, while completely ignoring the Palestinian eyewitnesses.
This policy has unavoidably resulted in a situation in which shooting at innocent Palestinians has practically become a routine. (B'Tselem)

And secondly, because at the very beginning of the second intifada, the IDF issued extremely broad open fire regulations, concerning who might be considered a legitimate target:

Sniper: "They forbid us to shoot at children".
Journalist: "How do they say this?"
Sniper: "You don't shoot a child who is 12 or younger".
Journalist: "That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed?"
Sniper: "Twelve and up is allowed. He's not a child anymore, he's already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that".
Journalist: "Thirteen is bar mitzvah age".
Sniper: "Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us".
Journalist: "Under international law, a child is defined as someone up to the age of 18."
Sniper: "Up until 18 is a child?"
Journalist: "So, according to the IDF, it is 12?"
Sniper: "According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don't know if this is what the IDF says to the media."
-- Amira Hass' interview with an IDF sharpshooter, explaining why so many Palestinian children were killed in the first weeks of the intifada, when the IDF was largely confronted by stonethrowers. Published in Ha'aretz, Don't shoot till you can see they're over the age of 12, 20 November 2000.

The first suicide bombing in the second intifadah was on Dec. 22 (no Israelis died in it). By that time, 86 Palestinian children (<18 years of age) had been killed by Israelis http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/rem ember2000.html

The first Israeli child was killed on Jan. 17, 2001 http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/rem ember2001.html
By that time, at least 90 Palestinian children had been killed by Israelis.

Alison Weir, in her documentary Off the Charts, noted the following:

Before a single suicide bomber had entered Israel after the start of the Second Intifada, sometimes called, after Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the al Aqsa Intifada, during its first month, 27 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza, the youngest only four months of age, and the majority due to gunshots to the head. Numerous children were also wounded. In the first three months alone, 159 children lost an eye presumably to rubber bullets shot from IDF rifles. Clearly the IDF were intentionally targeting these children, aiming at their heads with either rubber bullets or real bullets in the case of the child kills. We are talking here about a trained, mechanized army versus civilians, children participating in the intifada, the nonviolent resistance instituted by child and teenage Palestinian boys and girls. Oh, yes. Let's be fair. We did hear that an Israeli soldier lost his eye from a rock thrown by a Palestinian boy from a pretty IDF spokeswoman, but it was the only such incident reported in three years.

In addition to these children, many more innocent adult civilians were killed, in the month before suicide bombings commenced. If terrorism is the intentional killing of civilians, then clearly, Israel's armed forces were deep into terrorism, state sponsored terrorism, long before the Palestinians engaged in it to any degree. As a people fighting a military occupation, it would seem that the ultimate cause of all of these horrors on both sides rests with Israel and the purpose for which it continued its long occupation, the stealing of Palestinian lands.  

See Alison Weir's short documentary, Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America for the names, ages, places, and dates of these child killings.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid= -5600677940569035557&q=Alternate+Foc us

To be accurate, there were sporadic bombing incidents engineered by Hamas extremists in Israel during the Oslo period. None at all occurred between 1998 and 2000. But the strong resumption of attacks after 2000, over fifty in the first year, was directly related to civilian and child killings by IDF, and it was not just Hamas, but Islamic Jihad and other Fatah associated organizations that were involved.

This Time.com article apprises of what motivated them:

"Until recently most Palestinians believed they had alternatives to the kind of militancy practiced by Hamas. For years after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, which brought limited self-rule to the Palestinians and the prospect of an independent state, polls showed a strong majority of Palestinians supporting the peace process with Israel and only a minority endorsing suicide bombings. Thus, in their headhunting, the fundamentalists were limited to stalwart followers of their doctrine, which holds that any kind of peace with Israel is anathema. Even then, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had to cajole--some might say brainwash--young men into believing that the rewards of paradise outweighed the prospects of life on earth.

But with the breakdown of the peace process in the summer of 2000 and the start of the latest intifadeh that September, the martyr wannabes started coming to Hamas--and they didn't require persuading. "We don't need to make a big effort, as we used to do in the past," Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of Hamas' senior leaders, told TIME last week. The TV news does that work for them. "When you see the funerals, the killing of Palestinian civilians, the feelings inside the Palestinians become very strong," he explained."

From the mouth of Rantisi, but it also motivated Fatah supporters, to exact revenge for the killing of Palestinian civilians. Revenge is not a formal use of terrorism. See Alison Weir's film, Off The Charts, at Google Video.

(Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl e/0,9171,1101020415-227546,00.html

This commentary is from an article by Rami Khouri, editor of the Beirut newspaper, The Daily Star, which cynically denounced Olmert's statements professing concern for the well-being of Palestinian children:

(Ehud Olmert's Profound Ethics and Deep Lies)

http://www.ramikhouri.com/

"For anyone interested in the facts about the impact of Israeli policies on Palestinian children, a good place to start is the carefully checked data disseminated by the Palestinian Nongovernmental Organization Network (www.palestinemonitor.org). Their data is compiled and verified on the ground by the Ramallah-based Health Development Information and Policy Institute, which has been honored by the World Health Organization for its work in promoting Palestinian health needs. So these people know what they are talking about when it comes to health conditions on the ground in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Some of the facts they provide are as follows.

In just the first two years of the second intifada, from September 2000 to November 2002:

* 383 Palestinian children (under the age of 18) were killed by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers, i.e. almost 19% of the total Palestinians killed; those figures have increased since then.

* Approximately 36% of total Palestinians injured (estimated at more than 41,000) are children; 86 of these children were under the age of ten; 21 infants under the age of 12 months have been killed.

* 245 Palestinian students and school children have been killed; 2,610 pupils have been wounded on their way to or from school.

* The Israeli policy of widespread closure has paralyzed the Palestinian health system, with children particularly vulnerable to this policy of collective punishment. Internal closures have severely disrupted health plans which affect over 500,000 children, including vaccination programs, dental examinations and early diagnosis for children when starting schools.

* During the first two months of the intifada, the rate of upper respiratory infections in children increased from 20% to 40%. Almost 60% of children in Gaza suffer parasitic infections.

* An overwhelming number of Palestinian children show symptoms of trauma such as sleep disorders, nervousness, decrease in appetite and weight, feelings of hopelessness and frustration, and abnormal thoughts of death.

* There have been 36 cases of Palestinian women in labor delayed at checkpoints and refused permission to reach medical facilities or for ambulances to reach them. At least 14 of these women gave birth at the checkpoint with eight of the births resulting in the death of the newborn infants.

The Israeli army killing of Palestinian children continues apace. In its annual report May 16, the respected global human rights organization Amnesty International accused the Israeli army of killing 190 Palestinians, including 50 children, last year (2005)."

Here is some commentary from Jonathan Cook on a grandmother suicide bomber:

"If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties -- a grandmother -- chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.

Despite the "Man bites dog" news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly -- it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.

It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission; according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.

Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the "disengagement", the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.

Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.

Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family's lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.

Yet Western observers, and the organizations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.

Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood -- and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades -- Human Rights Watch published its latest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organization, complacent Western societies and Fatma's memory."

So Palestinians are to blame?