Israel/Palestine

The PLO recognized Israel in 1994-a recognition the Israeli government betrayed by mostly continuing to build settlements on the land it knew would HAVE to be part of a Palestinian state

After all these years, the Israeli government has refused to recognized the reality that Palestine is ALSO a nation, and has done everything it could to prevent other countries from doing so as well.

They had to know that MB-Hamas would never accept Israel, would never be interested in any sort of negotiation, and yet they put removing the PLO from the leadership above all other concerns. They put a pointless fixation with being able to say "we won, and they lost" over everything else.

The Palestinian side has at times made mistakes(and mistakes were made by those who claimed to act on their behalf-it was the Jordanians who expelled the indigenous Jewish community from the West Bank and closed off East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, NOT the Palestinians themselves. They had no power in those years and no way to control anything the Hashemites did) but no, it wasn't MAINLY their fault. For much of the time, the Israelis wouldn't even talk to them in any diplomatic matter and wouldn't give them any real options other than permanent exile or stateless powerlessness at home.

Some of that is to blame to, Aranthus. It's not going to work to expect to the community who's being treated worse, who are losing their land, who are seeing their olive and lemon groves stolen for no valid reason, whose solar panels are torn down just because the military authorities hadn't given the NGO permission to build them yet(as if solar energy can ever possibly be weaponized)who face perpetual surveillance, harassment, and violent retribution even for staging nonviolent protests, to say "you're right-YOUR side, the people who are grinding us into the dirt day after day, have it worse than us and are the REAL victims in this".

How likely was it that these methods were ever going to get the Palestinian side to say the exact words Netanyahu demands they say and say them in exactly the right tone?

It really doesn't matter whether they "recognize" Israel or not-the place isn't going away and they know that.

And ordinary Palestinians know that even if they do recognize Israel, as they clearly did in the Nineties, the Likudniks are NEVER EVER going to be satisfied with anything they do. Why should the say the exact words when saying those words won't lead to any positive change for them, when the army that is crushing them every day is never going to stop crushing them no matter what, will never ever leave?

It's not possible to humiliate and smash people into peace, Aranthus.

How about maybe treating them as human beings?