Hopefully Palestinians will be encouraged by this Israeli court ruling to use peaceful methods from now on to achieve their rights rather than the use of terror.

Rocketing Israeli towns and trying to send suicide bombers into Israel seems to have rebounded upon the Palestinians.

The only way for Palestinians to improve their lives is to learn how to achieve their rights peacefully.

James, you are talking out of your arse, if you think the only response to brutal violence by Israel is pacifism. Who are you to determine the manner in which Palestinians should defend themselves against overwhelming militrary might?

Do you think British troops would have retreated to Basra airposrt if the Iraqis sole response to occupation had been to line up with placards to be beaten and shot?

Do you think Palestinian cities would be the same if kids weren't prepared to risk their lives to throw stones at soldiers who enter their neighbourhoods?

Try doing a bit of thinking before writing such nonsense.

heres a book that can start to help get your head round the issues:

 http://www.southendpress.org/2007/items/87729
 http://crimethinc.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-nonviolence-protects-the-state-by-peter-gelderloos/

Joe Kay should try and understand that violence begets violence.

Gandhi won his cause using peaceful methods. 50 years of Palestinian terror has brought them only ever increasing misery ,a civil war, and the talibanisation of Gaza.

Attempting to use suicide bombers and the sending of rockets every day into Israeli towns will not help the Palestinian cause. It will instead bring even more misery upon the Palestinians.

Facile comparisons with Iraq are no argument. British troops are thousands of miles away from the UK. The Palestinians and Israelis live cheek by jowel with each other and must learn to live together.

In any case, purely in terms of the utility of terror, Israel detects nearly all suicide bombers before they get to Israel now and eliminates them. Rocket squads are also eliminated, sadly with loss of civilian life when Israel gets it wrong. Palestinian terror is not effective. It has failed apart from the psychological damage it does to a nation that seeks to establish itself through the destruction of another. The militarisation of Palestinian society has wreaked damage upon itself, just as the same happens in Israel.

UK activists who seek to encourage non-peaceful methods of achieving Palestinian rights are not helping the Palestinians in the least. They are helping to perpetuate a conflict that could have been settled long ago. Those who are not interested in a peaceful settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians, most notably the radical moslems of Hamas, Hezbolla and Iran, are the only ones to gain from this.

Gaza is going the way of Iran with churches being destroyed, internet cafes being firebombed, women being forced to wear the chador. The brutality of Hamas to its own people (remember the Fatah soldiers being thrown off rooves?) is a warning about the deep sickness in Palestinian society.

Thankfully Abbas has finally realised the dangers of the glorification of the gun, and that the danger to Palestine is now from militant Islam and is now starting to seek an accommodation with Israel.

Good luck to him. We may yet see a Palestinian state.

Try googling 'Quit India' and the 'Indian National Army' and this statement: ""I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a hopeless witness to her own dishonour." and then come back and say that India saw off the British Empire soley on the back of non-violence.

"UK activists who seek to encourage non-peaceful methods of achieving Palestinian rights are not helping the Palestinians in the least."

Besides the fact that I don't actually see anyone doing that,. I ask again, what right do you have to tell Palestinians how to behave? How do you have any more right than someone who thinks your analysis is incomplete, and that you're ignoring the reality of what actually happened to enbd the Raj? Is your land occupied, are people you know being assassinated by colonial settlers? We should be told.

As for Abbas, everyone in the Middle East thinks he's a quisling. I'm not surprised you like him.

"I ask again, what right do you have to tell Palestinians how to behave? "

As someone in the EU whose taxes end up feeding the Palestinian people I think i have as much right to comment upon their behaviour as anyone else including yourself.

As a humanist who sees two people's drenched in blood owing to a senseless war, I believe i have a duty not just to support Palestinians, but to castigate them for disgusting attacks deliberately aimed to kill as many civilians as possible. For your information the Israeli cities under attack from Gaza are nowhere near any illegal settlements. Gaza was handed back to the Palestinians lock stock and barrel some time ago now, and the result was a civil war amongst Palestinians!

The tragedy of the Palestinians is that it is a nation wedded to terror.

It needs to look for a different way, a way that almost succeeded in the 90's under the Oslo process. Arafat could have been the man to bring peace to that area, but as throughout his life he reverted to type and chose the path of violence.

I'm afraid Joe that people such as yourself giving encouragement to the continuation of violence will only mean further tragedy for many innocent Palestinians and Israelis alike before the Palestinian people inevitably come to the conclusion, maybe many years from now, that there is another way.

As with France,UK , USA & Germany & Japan this day will come. Pity you can't see that.

Does it bother Democracy Now that some comments made to this post yesterday - which I don't necessarily agree with - have been deleted?

There used to be a saying "I disagree with your views but I'd die for your right to say them". Democracy begins here if you ask me.