[YZF]

The Likud is not the "ruling party" in Israel. Israel's government is a coalition of multiple parties. The platform of any individual party does not equate to the official position of the state of Israel. Israel had right wing and left wing governments and the path towards a solution giving Palestinians control over the the west bank and Gaza goes back to Menahem Begin who was a prime minister from the Likud who signed a peace agreement with Egypt that included the path forward to solving the Palestinian conflict and the return of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt.

During the many years of this conflict Israel had right wing and left wing governments with various different approaches. Ehud Barak has offered Yasser Arafat a two state agreement very close to what John Kerry has recently described and was rejected [1]. Earlier while Rabin and Arafat were attempting to make progress towards peace Hamas was busy blowing up buses and malls with suicide bombers which eventually lead to the rise of the right, the assassination of Rabin and the collapse of the process.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning that the withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza strip which included tearing down Israeli settlements and evicting them forcefully, was done by Arik Sharon, prime minister from the Likud.

I don't think there's any factual basis to a comparison between the Likud party and Hamas. I'll agree there are definitely opinions in the Israeli right who feel strongly that the Palestinians should not be given their own state for various reasons. Some practical (see Gaza) and some religious/ideological. However that is not the official position of Israel. No doubt there is various political maneuvering going on but the source of the trouble is the Palestinians refusal, or inability, to negotiate in good faith and compromise something they've had many opportunities to do and their insistence of using violence as means of addressing their grievances.

The majority of the world is not fully democratic[2] (well, it's a mess) and doesn't share our values so decisions made in the UN by the "whole world" aren't exactly a yard stick of humanity. The UN is systematically biased against Israel. Where are the condemnations of US, Russian, Turkish involvements in Syria?

MORE on Israel's official position, one of many instances of Israel's willingness to make progress:

April 2003: A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict[3]

May 2003: Israel accepts the roadmap[4]

You keep saying Hamas has accepted a two state solution but I haven't seen an official link. In fact Israel's insistence that the Palestinians accept its right to exist wouldn't be a problem if the Palestinians indeed accepted a two state solution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

[3] http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/a%...

[4] http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2003/Pages/Goverment%20m...

[abalone]

The U.N. votes are nearly unanimous, like 150-2, and include all the democratic states (apart from Israel and the U.S.) It's pretty clear what the democratic world thinks of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

As for the claim that Israel has supported a two-state solution under Barak's leadership:

"the Camp David proposals divided the West Bank into virtually separated cantons, and could not possibly be accepted by any Palestinian leader... After the collapse of these negotiations, Clinton recognised that Arafat’s reservations made sense, as demonstrated by the famous 'parameters', which, though vague, went much further towards a possible settlement... After that, high-level Israeli-Palestinian negotiators proceeded to take the Clinton parameters as 'the basis for further efforts,' and addressed their 'reservations' at meetings in Taba through January. These produced a tentative agreement, meeting some of the Palestinian concerns... Problems remained, but the Taba agreements went much further towards a possible settlement than anything that had preceded. The negotiations were called off by [Israeli Prime Minister] Barak, so their possible outcome is unknown."[1]

So the initial offer (separated cantons) was a bad faith offer designed to be rejected, and then Israel dropped the negotiations when it got fairer.

[1] https://chomsky.info/20041118/

[YZF]

Clinton blamed Arafat [1] and Arafat didn't even speak for Hamas. Could you quote some direct sources rather than someone with a strong political agenda like Chomsky. Let's look at the raw facts, not opinions.

Generally the countries one would consider the "free world" have consistently supported Israel's right to defend itself, including against Palestinian terrorism. [2] is just one example but I can find many more. Please provide a source for your claim that UN decisions against Israel are nearly unanimous. I can't find any specific stats but I highly doubt your claim. While there's a lot of political deal making behind the scenes anti-Israeli decisions generally leverage the majority of the non-democracies of this world.

Hamas is an organization that does summary executions of people suspected of being spies and drags them through the streets tied behind cars (I'll spare you the link). Throwing their fellow Palestinians from Fatah off the roofs (again I'll spare you the link, you can find it yourself). Conducting campaigns of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Indiscriminate shelling of civilians and routinely using civilians as human shields. This organization is the source of suffering for both Israelis and Palestinians.

It's not that Israel is beyond reproach or always in the right but there's no comparison. How is "not getting a country with the lines that I want" justification for anything Hamas is doing anyways?

Please spend more time reading information from different sources about the facts and history of the conflict.

[1] https://www.clintonfoundation.org/main/news-and-media/statem...

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelectio...

EDIT: Donno what pushed my buttons to get into this discussion but the Gaza situation specifically seems to be pretty clear cut. The Palestinians got their own mini-state within a small geographic region and they made their choices to have conflict where they could have not had one. The history of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict is almost irrelevant. The scale and type of Israeli responses to the happenings in Gaza can be criticized but the fact stands that Israel withdrew and let the Palestinians manage their own business and it turned out to be a complete mess which means the likelihood of this being replicated in other Palestinian areas is just about zero. The Palestinians had a chance to prove something and they proved the exact opposite. They can't blame Israel for that.

EDIT2: Doing a little more research into UN resolutions. Ignoring the question of bias vs. other world affairs it seems the pattern is as follows:

- Those Israeli related resolutions are generally proposed by non-free nations

- The US automatically supports Israel. Canada typically supports Israel. Next up in support seems to be Australia in my limited sample.

- The "non-free-world" overwhelmingly supports those resolutions.

- If the resolution is not too strong and just expresses overall regret over violence etc. etc. the EU will typically vote for it.

- If the language is strong or the resolution appears overly biased the EU will generally abstain. I think a lot of those stronger resolutions that still pass would not pass without the non-free world support.

So I don't think the statement that it's always Israel+US vs. the rest of the world stands to scrutiny. Also most resolutions are non-binding. Let's also not fool ourselves that nations vote according to some moral conscience (those that even have that to start with).