The Third Intifada Is Inevitable
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"EARLIER this month, at a private meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his security advisers, a group of Middle East experts and former intelligence officers warned that a third Palestinian intifada was imminent. The immediate catalyst, they said, could be another mosque vandalized by Jewish settlers, like the one burned on Tuesday, or the construction of new settlement housing. Whatever the fuse, the underlying source of ferment in the West Bank is a consensus that the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has reached a dead end.
Mr. Abbas’s political strategy was premised on the notion that security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government would make Israel feel safer and remove its primary justification for continuing to occupy the West Bank, thereby clearing the way for a Palestinian state. Ironically, owing to the success of his efforts, many Israelis have had the luxury of forgetting that there is an occupation at all.
Thanks to the American- and European-financed peace that Mr. Abbas’s government has been keeping in the West Bank, Israelis have come to believe they can eat their cake and have it, too. A majority of citizens polled earlier this year said their state could remain Jewish and democratic without relinquishing any of the West Bank. Years of peace and quiet in Tel Aviv allowed hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take to the streets last summer to protest the high price of cottage cheese, rent and day care without uttering a word about Palestinians in the West Bank. The issue has ceased to be one of Israel’s primary security concerns. Mr. Netanyahu would have to be either politically suicidal or exceptionally forward-thinking to abandon a status quo with which a vast majority appears satisfied.
By contrast, Palestinians today see their leadership banging its head against a wall, hoping against reason that a bit more good behavior will bring about an independent state. As a result, longstanding debates over how to achieve national liberation — by comforting Israel or confronting it — have now been resolved. Palestinians of all political stripes are no longer arguing about whether to make Israel’s occupation more costly, but how."
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Thousands of terrorist attacks, suicide operations, over 10,000 rockets and a few thousand dead Israelis since Oslo, I just can't figure out why Israel doesn't end the occupation now. Wouldn't it be so much more efficient if the Palestinians could stop wasting all those high explosives on agricultural developments in the south and start hitting more valuable targets - like densely packed cities, airports and industries. I guess Israel's intransigence knows no bounds. Don't the Israelis know the Palestinians have given them every reason to trust their peaceful intentions?
Isn't it a bit obvious by now that when Israel left Gaza - it opened up a whole new dual strategy. The PA gets billions in AID dollars from western governments that believe that Abbas is just about ready to negotiate this time, he's so close, but never quite doing it. That real peace is just one more Israeli concession away. Meanwhile Hamas is free to carry on the Jihad spelled out in its charter - attack and murder as many Jews as possible using its own militias and surrogate terrorist groups. The deal is of course, that the PA has to kick back huge amounts of that AID to support the Hamas operations. Talk about having your cake and eating it too. 
I'm always amazed at the power of religious-like beliefs to make otherwise rational humans eagerly accept the most illogical and stupid conclusions.
