Originally Posted by levite

To be fair, Will, I don't think it's supposed to. Religion seldom justifies anything to people outside its own community.

I do believe that God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish People, and that the return of great numbers of Jews to found a state in that Land may well be the first step on a long road toward the coming of the messiah.

But that said, where I differ from most Religious Zionists is that I also think that God does not love unnecessary bloodshed and suffering, no matter who is doing the shedding of blood or the suffering. And while God may, indeed, have given us the entirety of the Land of Israel, the State of Israel will never know peace if it tries to hold onto all that Land, and the Arabs living in what we now call the Palestinian Territories (both Gaza and the West Bank) have a legitimate de facto claim of residence upon those areas.


if the so-called Palestinian authorities aren't able to improve the infrastructure, build and supply hospitals and food stores, and so forth, then I believe it is the duty of Israel to go in and do those things, and not just let the Palestinians there become poorer and poorer and ever more bitter (and more apt to radicalize).