Will there be peace if Palestinians lay down their arms?

[Miumer]

52. between a rock and a hard place

I agree that the Gazans and the palestinian people as a whole have a reason to be very skeptical. Israelis already hold all the cards, the war has been won and they have the "right" (or feel they have the right) for their terms because of that, they wont give that up, that would be unreasonable.

I'm just saying that when choosing between two bad options. Aggressions can only make things worse. It prolongs the cycle of violence and lengthens the time by when the concessions will be made and loosening the leash on Palestinians will happen. By peaceful means that will happen, thats the natural course of human development. (again: the black in the US, South Africa etc.).

Also you can look at the Sovietisation process in the USSR of Stalin. First they were oppressing the people and eliminating the potential threat (murder, deportation, arrests etc) and the actual threat to their end goal. (Not saying it was good or anything, they just had a goal and violent means were the only ones to achieve it in their vision) .The terror in turn turn brought about more upheaval among the occupied nations, and that in turn more terror until the local people accepted defeat and aggressive resistance was replaced by passive resistance and the grip started loosening and loosening. They are in a lot of ways totally different situations but the process is the same in a lot of ways.

The process of reconciliation has to start somewhere and keeping up aggressive resistance going will just keep the endless cycle going and going, cause at this point the Israelis will just not bow down to aggressive resistance. In my mind peaceful resistance will have a bigger chance or at least have some chance of making a change in the policies of the Israelis, while aggressive means have no chance.