A wonderful essay on why most who weigh in on the conflict, especially with a kneejerk "Free Palestine" or "Death to Arabs" are doing far more harm than good.
Adding my $0.02...
If we were to adopt the "Possession is 9/10 of the law" position, Israel wins. However...
We can then say (as many do), "Wait a bloody minute there! The Palestinians have been living there for centuries, and the Jews just swooped in from Europe to colonize..." This ignores the following relevant facts: (1) Jews have been living there for millennia; (2) About half the Jews now in Israel are descended from refugees who escaped Muslim countries such as Yemen, Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, etc.; (3) They and the other half are all descended from Jews who lived in that land further in the depth of history (see below); (4) The Palestinian national identity coalesced as recently as the late 1960s, decades after Israel's independence. Regardless of all those facts, anyone invoking history-based arguments opens the door wide to a deeper argument...
We can't cherry-pick to only go back a few centuries. If you make an argument based on centuries of history, we can respond, "If you go back millennia, Greater Israel (covering today's Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, most of Jordan, etc.) belonged to the Jews, and there were no Arabs there (let alone Muslims since Islam started in the 7th century). Seems that Israel wins here too. But...
The single inarguable fact here is that there are millions of Jews *and* millions of Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (for all values of "living"). If we accept that all humans have a right to live in peace, under democratically elected governments, in nations they wish to be citizens of, then how we got here cannot be used as a measure of who's right. This, whether we look at the last few decades, centuries, or millennia.
And here we get to the crux of the matter. If we allow loudmouths (on both sides) to try and out-shout everyone about why their side (or the side they prefer, if they're not part of the conflict) is right, then all we're doing is perpetuating the problem. The solution critically depends on both sides being willing to accept that no matter how we got here, their enemy has a right to exist, and a right to live in peace where they are.
Israel tried that (imperfectly, I'll freely accept) through the Oslo Accords, withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, etc. This, while dealing with their own extremists (one of whom assassinated PM Rabin in 1995 for making peace).
The Palestinians, on the other hand, seem incapable of preventing their extremists from making peace impossible. As you and some of your commenters have noted, it's hard (not to say impossible) to make peace with someone who's main intent in life is to kill you and your children, and who'll only stop fighting temporarily to have time to collect more means of accomplishing that intent.
IMHO, the only way this epic CF of a conflict gets resolved is if both sides can control their pet crazies long enough to make it possible for painful concessions to be made *and* for those to not be used against those making them. Unfortunately, I don't see that as likely to happen anytime soon, which is an incredible tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians.
And yes, I recognize that the above isn't perfectly objective, and is still a vast over-simplification of one of the most complicated, vexing, and long-running conflicts in the world.
I only hope that my own preference comes through - that both Israelis and Palestinians get to live in peace, dignity, freedom, and safety at both the personal and national level. And, if it's not too much to ask (hah!), in collaboration with each other that they make that tiny parcel of land a beacon of hope and prosperity for all.
