The opinions relating to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are as many as they are varied. I tend to be empathetic to both sides: Israel deserves the right to exist in peace and security, as does the Palestinians. Years ago, I had a verbal exchange with a Palestinian professor of mine when I was in university in Halifax who was astonished on how I couldn't be fully supportive of his cause. Suicide bombers aside, I told him that Israel and Palestine were both equally funded, Israel by its extensive and influential diaspora, and the Palestinians with billions of petro-dollars from anti-Israeli patrons. The difference between the 2 sides was remarkable. Israel has been focused and successful in building a first world nation-state, while the Palestinians have continued to live in the past, offering their people only squalor and rhetoric. There will come a time when peace will prevail, and Palestinian leaders such as Khaled Meshaal of Hamas will be accountable to their people for the lost decades of development prosperity, and hope in the name of stubbornness, hate and war.