Well ... as in all situations of this kind, killing any number of people, in any way, by either side will never solve the underlying problems and conflicts. The lost lives only serve to inflame the hatred and racism.
Yes - totally agree. You get extremists on both sides who think killing people or using armies to take over land is the way to solve political issues. But it rarely seems to work. In the short-term they might temporarily subdue their target, but inevitably some of the people on the receiving end of this kind of military and economic subjugation will take extreme measures to fight back against the extremism they experience. It doesn't seem possible to eradicate that part of human nature.
The US has been both aggressor in foreign disputes and also had to defend itself against aggressors (e.g. Japan in WW2). When it has tried to use its military and economic resources as an aggressor to prop up foreign regimes and even brought in boots on the ground it has not ended well for them - hence Vietnam, 9/11, Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, the US response led to the creation of ISIS.
The current Israeli government's extremist policy of stealing Palestinian land by expanding settlements and also allowing settlers to attack Palestinians will just lead to more extremist policy in response from Palestinian elements - more bombs and attacks inside Israel. And elements within the Palestinian population have no incentive to stop - factually they or their parents/ grandparents had their land stolen from them and were ethnically cleansed from villages when the State of Israel was created. Under International Law they are told they have a Right of Return to their land - and if laws don't apply or aren't enforced people have an incentive to take the law into their own hands.
I think some posters on here seem to think religion is the cause of extremism because some of the people in the fight brainwash recruits, keep up their morale or sustain group cohesion to be a more effective fighting force by invoking religious imagery, text and beliefs. The savagery of the many wars where religion was not invoked shows that many alternative abstract ideas can be used just as effectively as religious ideas to brainwash - e.g. nation state, patriotic duty, political allegiance, race, an existential threat to a culture and way of life etc - they can all generate the necessary bigotry and fervour to fight and commit acts of brutality and extremism. Eliminate religion and charismatic humans with nature/nurture tendencies towards extremist thought will just transfer their savagery and intolerance to brainwash people susceptible to their influence with another abstract idea and the killing and extremism will continue.
It's pretty clear the fight between the Arabs and the Jews regarding Israel and Palestine and specifically the Illegally Occupied Territories is about land and self-determination. The Jews and the Muslims could co-exist if they weren't both fighting over the same land due to understandable aspirations to nationhood - land promised to both of them by the British for their own political interests in the early 20th century.
