What a bold statement! I can see you being poetic stating an extremely pathetic claim! I can definitely assert that your knowlege about the history of that area emanates from a zionist propaganda.  Let me carefully comment your rather foolish statement: "If the Muslim lay down their weapon, there will be no more war" ... that is actually true for the simple reason that they will be consequently colonized and annihilated by the israHelly cowards!  "if the Jewish lay down their weapon, there will be no more Israel" ... that would be great, because that one racist colonialist entity should have not existed from the beginning.

First, you should really cut this bullshit and go learn about history first. Jerusalem has never been Jewish for more than probably 150 years at most except in rotten minds like yours of course. Historically, Muslim has been the best people to Jews who have been exterminated by many other groups. The Jews were kicked out of Jerusalem by the Roman (you should at least know this). And only after the Muslim kicked the Romans out of Palestine that the Jews started living in Peace there! If you need any good references on this matter, I'm more than happy to help!

The following links are facts and opinions about the conflict in the region compiled by a very famous Israeli computer scientist (Oded Goldreich):

http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/politics.html

http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/PS/pi.pdf

The following organization is also Israeli but is against the crimes that Israel has committed:

http://www.hadash.org.il/

As for the history of the conflict, one could check the following

http://www.merip.org/palestine-israel_primer/toc-pal-isr-primer.html  

Other interesting media:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1-_JmXQt0&mode=related&search=

Naom Chomsky is also a good reference.

I agree with you, Hamas is far from being smart ... they're definitely handling the situation so badly. Palestinian should adopt a much better strategy than Hamas' in order to negociate with the zionists.

Palestine is the whole land that encloses Jerusalem，Haifa, Tel-aviv, Gaza ... Palestine existed way longer before any Jew stepped in there. BTW Gaza is a much more recent city compared to Jerusalem. Palestinians (pre-Judaisam, Christian and Muslim) have been living in Jerusalem and other neighboring parts for ever.

Actually http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/PS/pi.pdf is very simple to read and has very important historical fact of the region. Unfortunately, I don't have a book in mind that you can purchase in the US (where publications are strongly controlled by pro-Israeli groups). I also recommend to watch the following movies:

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=117

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=404

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=403

Just for fun, you should also watch this guy bashing a stupid Israel-biased journalist: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wdwk1dp-uU

Let me make this clear. Jews lived in Jerusalem for thousands of years; there is no doubt; however, they have NEVER EVER been a MAJORITY there for more than probably 150 years. That is my point! I can't call a place X Jewish or Hebrew because some Jews lived there or because they claimed that X is their saint corner. In that same logic every single country on earth will be Jewish! 

Do yourself a favor and read other books than the bible! If I were next to you now, I would have bitten you for the amount of confusions that you're spitting :) First, I never mentioned Persians! Also, Persians are the first guys who distroyed the first Jewish temple of Jerusalem and killed almost every single Jewish there (google it or check wikipedia) ... I'm not sure how you made the lovely friendship between them - quite a mistery :-) Your historical facts are all biblical claims, and I'm therefore simply turning them down! I'm almost sure I can find a religious book that claims that China belongs to Tibet :) Besides, you seem to forget that Persian have become Muslim longtime ago! Muslims took over Jerusalem under Khalif Omar and kicked out the Romans (Byzantines to be more precise). Back then, there was only a minority of Jews; and most of them reentered Jerusalem with the Muslims.

Sorry for being too rough in answering your post! I used quite some strong terms that I could have easily avoided. Unfortunately I do not have online documents that support my claim (150 years) ... everything that you may find online about Jerusalem is already written by pro-Israelis. But I will promise to spend more time on looking for the documents (and if needed, I will scan them and put them online). The kingdom of Israel existed for 600 years but was not centered in Jerusalem only: Hebron was the capital for most of the time and then Jerusalem for a minor period. Anyway, wikipedia, although, does not agree with my views, reports that the whole life of the kingdom is about 600 years (and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem) which is honestly not that long period relatively to the time Muslim spent in Jerusalem (sine year 638). BTW, Palestenian Muslims are Arab of culture and mostly Phoenician ethnically (group that existed in Palestine way before the Jews entered that area). Here is something from Wikipedia:

"Jerusalem is considered Islam's third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. Among Muslims of an earlier era, it was referred to as al-Bayt al-Muqaddas; later, it became known as al-Quds al-Sharif. In 638, the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem.^[52] With the Arab conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city.^[53] The Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with Monophysite Christian Patriarch Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule.^[54] Umar was led to the Foundation Stone on the Temple Mount, which he cleared of refuse in preparation for building a mosque. According to the Gaullic bishop Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679-688, the Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodated 3,000 worshipers.^[55] The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the Dome of the Rock in the late 7th century.^[56] The 10th century historian al-Muqaddasi writes that Abd al-Malik built the shrine in order to compete in grandeur of Jerusalem's monumental churches.^[55] Over the next four hundred years, Jerusalem's prominence diminished as Arab powers in the region jockeyed for control.^[57]"

I completely understand that Jews suffered a lot in the past, but that can never explain or excuse the atrocities that they are committing in Palestine. Israel as established 60 years ago is based upon a very racist ideology named "zionism". In a nutshell, this is what happened: Europeans massacred Jews during the second world war; but then kind of felt guilty and wanted to pay back to the one who survived (actually they really did not feel guilty, they just wanted to relocate them from Europe to somewhere else). The one who survived were unfortunately fueled by zionism and wanted to establish a nation in Palestine which back then was under British control despite the fact that it was 99% Arab. The British did not mind giving the land to the Jews even though it was dwelled by other people. Once the zionists moved to Palestine, they started forming terrorist groups that chased many Palestenians out and killed many others. That's pretty much how they grew this big and swallowed Jerusalem entirely. 

1. "The Zionists in Palestine (called the Yishuv) established self-defense organizations like the Haganah and the (more radical) Irgun. The latter carried out reprisal attacks on Arabs from 1936 on" ref. http://www.israel-palestina.info/arab-israeli_conflict.html

It is true that they also targeted British troups too.

2. 78% in 1947 (after factoring out the zionist immigration from Eastern Europe (mainly Russia) that started in 1905 where the Arabs were the vast majority i.e. in the 90% - I know I kind of exagerated when I said 99% but the point is to mention a vast majority.

3. That makes quite some sense to attack a group of people who are first outsiders and then declare your own land as their nation EXCUSIVELY (Jewish nation). I agree that attacking was not such a wise idea anyway because they let the epidemy grow beyond an uncontrollable point! The Arabs lost mainly because they were not organized but also outnumbered in terms of troops and weapons (Israeli were backed by Westerners); the Arab defeat was deserved! The loss of this war caused the massive expulsions of many Arabs from their houses and farms; and whoever resited got attacked by zionist groups as I mentioned in 1. For instance Dar Yassin massacre ...etc. I can list many others. If the Iraeli has lost the war, it would have been disastral for them  ... but then they're the aggressors. Imagine that the British has decided to give a Chinese province to the Jews as  a reperation ... I wonder how we would have reacted?

我非常反对像井盖儿那种不懂历史，狂热亲以的人，但我并不认为你在这方面的知识比他好多少。

至多你们偏执的方向不同。

I do not agree with the comparison you'd made: it is true that I got emotional at some point and claimed numbers without specifying the right context (for instance the 99% which should have been 90% in the context that I added in 2.) ... also the 150 years that I have not fully explained but willing to put more explanation in the future (the discrepancy emanates essentially from the difference betweeen scientific/archelogical studies (~150) and biblical/religious studies (~600)). My lack of preciseness is as dramatic as yours :-) But I think we pretty much get the big lines of history right.

Same person who can't type Chinese is back! I can see the topic has evolved ... oops somebody got banned !!!