"the paradox is that under the current situation nobody can experience an improvement"

Yup. That's the problem all right, Allen. However, that used to be the problem in Ireland too. And it used to be the problem at the Berlin Wall. Eventually a solution can be found, if people decide to stop fighting and try something else.

As someone said earlier in this discussion: like the Europeans, the Middle Easterners may eventually try getting along with one another...AFTER they have tried absolutely everthing else! :-)

That seems to be the usual way.

Gorbachev managed to end the Cold War without sliding into a 3rd World War as the Soviet Union unraveled piece by piece. That takes great imagination and flexibility. It takes a will to avoid bloodshed. A less imaginative Russian administration would probably have fought rather than change...and a couple of hundred million people would have died.

I am hoping for similar flexibility on the part of Israelis and Muslims in the Middle East. Part of the problem, though, is that the Muslims are so fragmented into so many different groups. That makes it very hard to get all of them to listen to a new proposition at any given time.

The North American Indians had exactly the same problem when dealing with the whites...and with each other. They were too divided. Israel is a single political entity. Its opponents are many entities. That makes for an unpredictable situation.