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I dunno if you should base your whole outlook on a friend who spoke to some Palestinians
Look up pallywood. There's a giant PR war fought.
I'm sure Israelis to plenty of terrible things, but there's two sides. Hamas stores rockets in civilian area's on purpose. They want citizens bombed so they can go on the PR battle.
Either way all I'm saying is I think carter is biased and you could find better books. That's it. You can be knowledgable and biased at the same time. People on both sides are.
I hope I made it clear that my outlook on the matter wasn't changed, his was.
My training in conflict management is limited compared to other disciplines in Political Science, so I don't want to offer a definitive opinion either way. I will say three things, though:
1. UN Resolution 181 (1949) probably transferred too much land to Israel.
2. Concessions need to be made from leadership on both sides, but religious extremism makes compromise difficult-- particularly given the historic antipathy between Israeli-Palestine (that is, you grow to hate the other side not knowing why).
3. Much of what we read/see/hear in the popular discourse regarding the conflict is filtered through a pro-Israeli lens (for reasons that have been discussed in similar threads on NT and elsewhere).