very interesting insights - thank you

I am not absolutely convinced the palestinians are as different from us as you say,

It's true that to some extent we the jews are different from most other people in the world, that we don't have a strong attachment to our land (as for the most of the last 2000 years most of the jews never felt truly at home anywhere)
and in that sense the Palestinans are perhaps more normal than us.

But still I think that those refugees that have made a good life for themselves (as some have in Jordan and Lebanon) will settle for a symbolic apology and will not fight to the death to come back to their land.

One of the problems is that we are very egocentric, and see everything as relating to us: the "right to return" is just a way to destroy Israel, a military attempt to save the soldier would be good for them because there will be more Israeli causulties etc..

Like any other people, the Palestinan mostly think of themselves. Right now it is often the case that they have conflicting interests with our own, but this is not a law of nature, and definitely it's not their main motivation to cause us harm. This is just at the moment the most popular tactic, which is not extremely successful, but seems to be the best thing they have..