[yuvadam]

The sole reason that the current protests are a consensus right now is because the protest leaders have framed this as a nationwide, non-political, issue.

Rest assured that the majority of the protestors are much aware of the moral and economic price of the settlements and would rather see them taken apart. Current estimates put the total investment in settlements in the West Bank and Gaza over the years at more than $50B. Trust that the general Israeli population would very much want to see those amounts of money invested in health, welfare, transportation and education within the '67 lines.

Stating that fact upfront would have marked the protests as "yet another leftist campaign".

[JohnsonB]

Take the settlements apart? You do realize that amounts to ethnic cleansing, correct? Neither the majority of the Israeli population nor the protesters believe this is a good idea.

[yuvadam]

I'm not sure where you get your facts from, but the truth is that a) the majority of the Israeli population supports withdrawl from the West Bank and b) the settlements were built on what is by every consensus the area that should one day be the Palestinian State.

As an Israeli I refuse to control another people. I think it is immoral and wrong. And yes, the settlements are wrong, and they continue to corrupt us and our morals, day by day.

[JohnsonB]

Being asked in a poll "Do you support dismantlement of West Bank Settlements" is a far cry from actual going through a process of forcing 300k Israelis out of their homes. Remember the Gaza evacuation? If you think Israel has the stomach to let that happen on a scale more than 30 times larger, you are dreaming.

> As an Israeli I refuse to control another people.

No matter how you spin it, the existence of West Bank settlements does not imply controlling other people. They're just houses. You can have any number of political arrangements that allows the existence of the houses without controlling anyone. Which includes the one that exists now where the Palestinians completely control their own civilian lives. Those are the facts on the ground, and is certainly a far cry from "apartheid."

[shmulkey18]

If it were every consensus I find it hard to believe that they would be built. And removing the only Jews from an area is sort of the definition of ethnic cleansing.

[yuvadam]

So we're down to formal definitions? No problem, I'll bite.

Apartheid - "... an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime". [1]

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid