Think of Palestine and you do not conjure up images of the Holy Land, or of olive trees by shimmering brooks or even of the late Dr. Edward Said....but the images that come to our mind are that of masked men welding submachine guns and veiled women chanting 'Death to USA', 'Death to Israel'....

And this is precisely why the Palestinians will never have a state of their own. They still think that the Jewish people will somehow tire of seeing so many dead men, women and children amongst them and either pack up and go back to Europe or wherever or just jump into the sea. They still think Israel is a temporary aberration that will dissapear or be re-conquered aka the crusader states of Antioch and Edessa.

But all these suicide bombings and murder that they indulge in will only make the Israeli people more steadfast in their determination to stay and fall where they stand if such an occasion comes.

In 1857, a large part of India rose in a violent revolt against the British. This was called the 1st war of Independence or simply the Sepoy Mutiny. Several British cantonment towns were taken out, British non-combatants massacred en-masse. The revolutionaries thought that this would make the Brits turn tails and run. They did not. The British with a technologically superior and better organised army and with an intention of meting punishment to those who had murdered their 'women and children' stayed back , fought, and won. They gave back as ruthlessly as they had got.

India would only be freed almost a 100 years later by the Mahatma. Gandhi knew that brute force could not work against the British. They could only be felled with one weapon. And the weapon that he used was non-violent non-cooperation.

The British when confronted with unarmed men and women defying curfew and marching peacefully, shouting slogans, not paying tax, did not know how to deal with such an 'army'. They could not take it anymore and were forced to leave.

And the Israelis are equivalent to the Brits here. If the Palestinians were to decide today, that they will not co-operate with the Israelis in any way and will lauch another 'intifada' but not with stones and guns and lynchings and suicide-bomber teenagers, but peacefully and harm not an Israeli fly by their methods...nobody would be able to stop the establishment of a future palestinian state.

But then we know, the Palestinians have no Gandhi among them, they only have the unreformed terrorist Arafat. They're not just as smart!!