A more complete answer from me.
From 1997 to 2002 I ran the middle east operation of a company registered in the USA but whose products were designed and manufactured to the most part in israel, in which products were installed in major companies in a number of countries including UAE, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt plus systems were installed in Palestine. I spent some time in the Tel Aviv area and visited (including for periods occasionally of weeks at a time) most of the countries israel was banned from. I have or had friends across the region including a few israelis and a larger number of people of palestinian family origin (many palestinians live in the gulf, more in jordan and lebanon) who may not return to the places their grandparents were born and lived in.
At the start of this period the 'two-state solution' appeared to be viable and even desired more than not on both sides. This was what permitted the enterprise to start and initially flourish. In 2000 the company was in the process of out-sourcing certain technologically unfashionable development (I mean highly-specific, low-level coding activities which were not-transferable skills within the global IT industry) to Jordan, where there was a wealth of highly-educated programming talent that had nowhere to work). This was ground-breaking (afaik) and, in the way that small steps are, important in the development of business relationships between israel and arab countries. I was highly involved in this. On 28th September 2000 Ariel Sharon (the instigator of the massacre of 400-3,500 palestinian and lebanese civilian by lebanese falangists in 1982), surrounded by 100s of riot police 'visited' the Haram al Sharif and all hell broke loose. It was the end of co-operation.
In israel I made a few friends (I am not by nature gregarious) who I was proud to know and would be delighted to see again. I met a range of people (this was an IT company so was let's say 'white collar' and relatively educated; I don't recall meeting any orthodox jews) including one who boasted that he kept a pistol in his glove box 'in case he met a pale' and was a not very extreme example of a fairly large minority. Among the arabs (and these were again mainly well-educated workers and middle-class businessmen) there was also a gradient. A majority of non-Palestinians were frankly not that bothered, concerned but resigned. Palestinian diaspora members in the gulf were politely angry but resigned (imagine being born in Kuwait/Saudi/UAE etc in a palestinian family - having no right to remain without a work permit and nowhere else to go - this is common). In jordan (about half of the population are disposessed palestinians) there was rather more feeling, some anger (arabs are generally polite and won't rant at visitors). Interestingly we had to put an israeli engineer into Amman to install something (it was common for israeli tourists to go to Amman, Petra etc so while quite brave this wasn't foolhardy) or other; the palestinian engineer he worked with had been quite strident about israel but they did the job, sometime afterwards (it was at a conference in Deauville during the week of 9-11) he told me the experience had 'made him realise that this was just another bloke' or words to that effect. This was moving.
So,
@dannyc , to start to answer your question, I have had personal experience of this and I still feel I have vicarious skin in the game. As you say there are many other atrocities going on, the other reasons I think this is special are:
1. No other state supported by my country is ethnically cleansing annexed territory as far as I know. Or has apartheid integrated in its laws or constitution.
2. Britain holds a major share of responsibility.
The Balfour Declaration set up the notion that palestine was unoccupied and should be given to european and american (white) settlers, thus declaring the indigenous population subhuman like australian & new zealand aborigines, native americans and other inconvenient inhabitants.
British officials (McMahon etc) promised a free Syrian as a reward for the Hashemite arabs' support against the Ottoman Empire in 1916, concurrently agreeing with France and Italy & Russia iirc (Sykes-Picot) that the middle east would be divided between the 4 powers.
Britain and France stalled and prevented the recognition of an independent, Syria under it's king appointed by a democratically elected parliament (1920/21) under the aegis of the League of Nations and supported the French destruction of Syria.
During the mandate period (1922-47) we began the ethnic cleansing (Article 4 of the mandate "An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration to assist and take part in the development of the country.")
3. We denied and deny the culture of pre-1916 Palestine, ignoring 500 years of development of a complex, developed society before and within the Ottoman Empire.
4. Our press is incredibly biased and presents israel and as israelis as the underdogs against a massive force of crazed islamists.
