Are there any benefits of choosing one or the other?

Some Jarl's will be replaced depending on what side you pick and town guards will be changed to Stormcloak/Imperial soldiers, but nothing major. No real benefit in picking one over the other.

thanks

Is one faction any easier to defeat than the other? I have been staying out of the conflict, but think it is time to make a decision. Can the conflict be resolved diplomatically, or must there be battle?

I've done both and (apart from the first quest) haven't noticed much difference in difficulty. Or reward.

Stormcloaks have lighter armor so they take less to kill but have better weapons meaning they can hurt you more. On the other hand, some Imperial soldiers have heavy armor but most have terrible Imperial light armor and have terrible weapons. No, you can't solve the war diplomatically. You can call a momentary ceasefire so you can defeat the dragons but it ends after you beat Alduin. If you want to complete the civil war, you have to choose a side and fight

I'm not sure which you find harder, bandits or ice wraiths. Other than that, the quests are relatively the same difficulty.

You can get a temporary truce if you do the main quest, but it isn't permanent.

Thank you for the answers!

People have mentioned that when you choose one side you will get attacked (after warnings) if you wander into the others' camps. I'm in the middle of it right now, but I assume the camps disappear after victory.

No camps are not disappearing after victory. And the commanders of the camps will always stay essential.

Sweet. Can we mess with them by letting them attack us or will it count as a murder if we defend ourselves?

There's somekind of bug there. If you go to enemy camp they will warn you a few times and then attack to you. I always kill only those who are attacking to me but still get one or two murders count in my crime stats. I wonder why it works like that?