Israel/Palestine is bad enough. I am reading a book right now on the break up of Yugoslavia and the horrible wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Absolute insanity over absolute crap.

To me it is simple. You have two people who are closely related who have inhabited the land as far back as we can trace. Fine. In essence Israelis and Palestinians are the same ethnic group but mixed in with different outside mixes and having chosen different religious paths sometime in the mists of history.

You have an area that has been ruled by various warring empires from ancient Rome to 1948. No independent state during that whole time unless you want to count the very odd and short lived aberations of the Crusader states. The break up of the Ottoman Empire left this area in a no-man's land that the Brits got stuck with but didn't really want.

THe UN came up with a solution whereby the single ethnic group with two identities got two states to have those identities expressed. Fine.

Only problem is that once again outside empires (US and Soviet Union and Arab states) intervened and mucked it up. The real culprit were the surrounding Arab states who invaded and promptly refused to allow a Palestinian state to form until Israel was wiped off the map. Things have been kind of frozen there except chunks of land switched from Arab occupation to Israeli occupation and Arab states have quieted their rhetoric on wiping Israel off the map.