Arthur Balfour was born at Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland.

“The Balfour Declaration of 1917: A statement of policy by the British government stating that “[the] government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the understanding that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…”

I do, however, think that, in this conflict perhaps more than in any other, people of faith need to try to seek the will of God. Easier said than done; but I think God is for peaceful co-existence of all peoples and faiths, not dividing lines keeping them apart; and it’s that vision of reconciliation and peace that should guide the deliberations and actions of those working for a true and lasting settlement. And that also involves reconciliation in some form, which we have to hope that God’s Providence (alone) will bring, between the three great monotheistic religions on earth. I note you said only two, which I assume omits Islam. No peace without getting the Muslims on board!

Once Palestine (It’s a Roman and later British name for the land of Israel) had been already divided by the League of Nations in 1923 that handed the Eastern part to Hashemite Kingdom to rule the Arab Palestinians there, they fail to accomplish mission and hand the Western part back to the Jews. They failed their historic mission because of small local politics of the British. Now you say, that Israel should add and give the Jordanian 1948 occupied territories to the same people in order to create their 2nd Palestinian state. So, why then not to create a second Jewish Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria next to the second Arab Palestinian state there? Just to be even.

I’m quite sarcastic because people in Europe projects their opinions with out digging the facts and lean on them, but fix their mind in reaction to the current Anti Israel motivated misguided and false headlines of what occurs Now. Israel pictured as the big and strong Goliath and small but blood shading Arab Palestinians as the weak and just. That attitude is even not actually meets the facts, less to say morally correct. Israel is the tiny entity that suffers from Islamic/Arab rejection since hers very beginning. Even Egypt and Jordan reflect that true through their official and non-official staff, academics and religion’s clerks.

As for describing Israel as Jewish state I see a lack of knowledge of those who claim that Israel should be secular. When said a “Jewish state” it refers to the fact that Israel is the national state of the Jewish people and it has nothing to do with religion. When one says that England (not Britain) is Anglican state it doesn’t mean that religion is above all. England is the land of the English and Britain of the Britain. What the Jews can do when ‘Jewish’ is a national and religious under the same umbrella?
Israel is a secular state and ALL religions are tolerated with great concern to religious people of all kinds as needed, because Israel is a democracy and because of the very sensitive fact that Israel Land is the Holy Land, at least in the eyes of the two great religions on earth. But it has nothing to shade upon the ultra free society that exists in Israel.

Why people think that Palestinian Jews have no permission to settle and live in their Holy Land? Why do you favor the Apartheid policy to cleanse the Land of Israel of Jews?

The Palestinian Arabs have already had their own national home in the East Bank. Just turn Jordan a democracy and the vast majority of Arab Palestinians will rule their state by their own. They need not a second state on the account of The Jewish Palestinians.

There is one solution for the Paletinian problem. And the solution contains ONLY two states in historical Palestine, and NOT 3 or 4 states.

Jordan, aka the eastern part of Palestine, should be the Palestinian Arab state which it’s Capitol is Amman. You have to remember that 85% of the Jordanians are Arab Palestinians, and the Kings’ family and his Beduins are Hashemite Beduin tribes from middle – western Saudi Arabia.
Israel, the state of the Palestinian Jews, should control and dominant the western part of Palestine, and with its Capitol Jerusalem. The border between both states will be the Jordan River.

Arabs and Jews will live where as they live today and the Arab refugees’ problem will be settled within the Arab Palestinian state with the help of other countries, including Arabs’ and Israel.

Arabs in both states will vote to their national Parliament in Amman. Jews in both states (if Jews will move to live in now-Jordan) will vote to their national Knesset in Jerusalem. That will make sure that Israel will stay a Jewish state no matter how many Arabs will live inside the land. If military clashes and terror actions continue, Israel always can evacuate and transfer Arabs from west to east of the Jordan River, with or with out the Jordanian Palestinians approval.

So in that respect the solution you suggest already exists.

I am also pretty sure that Gaza was historically considered part of Egypt, not Palestine. And the West Bank was originally Jordan of course. The “Palestinians” didn’t do themselves any favours when they attempted an armed coup to take over Jordan hence their expulsion.

This isn’t meant to excuse the driving out of non-Jews at the beginning of the Israeli State – nor indeed the equivalent expulsion of Jews from throughout the Middle East leaving them with only Israel to go to. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but too many years have now passed to do other than accept that it is too late to change this now.

Do you remember the desperate attempts to come up with a deal in the dying days of Bill Clinton’s Presidency? Israel agreed to all the Palestinian demands save one – “the right of return”, i.e. the right to swamp Israel’s *democratic* state with hostile immigrants. And so because of this Yasser Arafat refused to deal.

The real tragedy is that no solution that admits the continued existence of an Israeli State will be tolerated by the Islamists who have the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people. In other words, there is no solution. Except perhaps one in which Egypt and Jordan take back their territory and start to police the “Palestinian” Arabs within. And who’d want to grasp that poisoned chalice?