Yosi Klein Alevi, BBC site.



Twice in the last decade Israeli leaders - Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 - have accepted Palestinian statehood.

Dozens of settlements would have been uprooted and others concentrated in blocs along the border, in exchange for which Palestine would have receive compensatory territory from within Israel proper.

The result would have been a contiguous Palestinian state in the equivalent of the territory taken by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, with Jerusalem as a shared capital.

Palestinian leaders effectively said no.

That's because the deal would have required one significant reciprocal concession: confining the return of the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to a Palestinian state.

Internal collapse

The main obstacle to an agreement, then, is not territory or settlements but the Palestinian insistence on the "right" to demographically destroy the Jewish state. Absurdly, the Palestinian leadership is demanding that Palestinians immigrate not only to a Palestinian state but also to a neighbouring state, Israel.