Your title explains the opinions on the arab and jewish sides. It would be fantastic if these two sides could achieve peace, or even just come to a workable accommodation with one another. Think of all the people who use this situation as a sounding board for their own actions no longer being able to use this situation.

Patriotism is about love for one's country, not necessarily a desire to fight for it.

Maybe not a desire, Dan, but a willingness. What do you love that you wouldn't fight for?

Jay:

Fighting for one's country frequently means fighting in some pointless foreign conflict. It is not surprising that a lot of people in many countries are not too thrilled about fighting for their country. It does not mean that they would not fight if their country was truly threatened or that they do not love their country.

Perhaps with a semantic distinction, you might have a point. In a "pointless foreign conflict," (let's say Kosovo or Somalia, though I'm sure some lefties might have other examples) external soldiers fought for their countries in the sense that they fought ON BEHALF OF their countries.

Regarding Israel, those peeps are regularly fighting FOR their country, for the safety and security of their country. To be willing to do that, I think, is a requirement to claim 'patriotism.'

Plus, there are people like Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses who are religiously pacifistic.

I'm sorry to say that peace is impossible untill there is a resolution between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations. Let us not forget that the Palestinian problem is a relatively new one. Palestinians are sort of the gypsies of the Arab world. The nations that most closely represent Palestinian heritage are Jordan and Syria but they both kicked them out and never looked back. Why doesnt anyone ask Jordan or Syria to concede land to the people that are actually from there? I guess at this point that is rhetorical. The reason Palestinians find themselves in the pickle that they do is because Israel absorbed scores of them in the 60's and they betrayed them in '67 when they used their asylum to help Jordan,Egypt and Syria(alittle Iraq too) launch the 6 day war. The after math of that war was really the begining of the situation we find ourselves in today as most Palestinians were exiled from Israel(they didnt go too far). Many were reabsorbed into Israel(non of the attacking nations accepted the Palestinians). History repeated itself in '73 when the same rat bastards launched the yom kippur war(again with help from the Palestinians). That was the last straw and when Israel fought off the cowards, the Palestinians became refugees( i wont go into why no Arab nation wanted them, but there is a good reason). In al the wars in written history there has been a winner and a loser whi accepts his loss or the winner continues to kick their ass till they do. Although Israel won the military war against the offending nations and they have essentially accepted their loss(Israel took almost nothing other than the key military locations that the Arab nations used to launch their attacks)the Palestinians are the last remaining representatives from those wars. They were part of the losing side yet they continue to push for the destruction of Israel and make demands. They must accept that they are part of the losing side and accept the beyond fair demands of the winning side(like Japan and Germany, so like them Palestinians can build a functional society, with plenty of help). As long as this is handled with kid gloves by the greater powers it will not improve. If this were allowed to run its natural course 2 decades ago, thousands of lives would be saved and Palestine would be on its way to being a productive member of the free world, because what they have now is aweful and no amount of concessions will change that.