@Invictus:
"However, I don't think that it is Hamas alone that is blocking a Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side with Israel. It's certainly a major part. Maybe the main part. But other reasons exist."
Before getting to those other points--again, this post was mainly focused on the Palestinian side of things in and of themselves...why they're NOT a united government/front, vs. why they're not an independent state, if that makes sense. Related but still different topics.
On the settlers:
I agree that, in the West Bank especially, settlements are a problem, and would largely fall on the "Israel" side of the blame here, when this is all said and done and future history classes hundreds of years from now (assuming they're not, you know, still fighting, of course) study this and assign blame to different sides.
I say "largely," since I'd argue it's pretty rare in this conflict for an incident to be purely the fault of one side or the other; rather, there's only who's "more" to blame.
East Jerusalem is another story, but I digress.
One of the biggest problems with this is the simple fact that the two swaths of Palestinian land aren't contiguous, and can never be without Israel giving up what would frankly be an unreasonable tract of land, since that'd basically carve Israel in two...Palestinians don't like that situation now, so it's pretty unreasonable to ask Israelis to willingly cut their country in half, especially to allow for the formation of a state run by an "enemy" of nearly 70 years.
I increasingly think the only way to solve this and make the peace last--I'm not convinced a non-contiguous state can work, not at this point, and definitely not with security a huge concern for Israel--that the Palestinians will have to give up one of the two patches of land they have now in exchange for more land adjacent to the region they would keep, which Israel would then have to cede.
The West Bank would make the most sense, as the larger of the two...but on the other hand, part of the reason it's favored is that it's adjacent to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to claim as an at least partial capital (and I think it's safe to say many Palestinians and a majority of the Islamic world would want the the whole city itself returned to Islamic control.)
The latter is what Israel fears, and the latter will NOT happen. Israel would fight a war to keep that city, and they would win. No way even an actually-unified Palestinian front would win that war...given the state of the Middle East right now, with all the other wars and civil wars, good luck getting help if you're on the Palestinian side, but even if you do (and in fairness, if anything could unite some of these nations, it'd be an anti-Israel war for Jerusalem) Israel has won with far larger forces set against them, and with far worse equipment.
I think Netanyahu and his cronies want to annex the whole of the West Bank, and make Gaza + maybe a bit of the surrounding terrain there the Palestinian state.
It'd be tiny, isolated from other Arab states besides possibly Egypt, an Israeli ally, Israel would get more land for more of its people, and there'd be no way the Palestinians could claim Jerusalem, as Gaza's on the other side of the country.
Fair or not, I think that's what their plan is...and I don't know what anyone can do to stop that at this point...the West won't invade Israel, and any other prospective force that would invade can't beat them, so even if Israel became a pariah state, if they feel that's a worthwhile trade in the long-term, getting more land AND giving the Palestinians a state on Israeli terms and away from Jerusalem...
It's hard to argue with that logic, even if you really can condemn any potential inequities there.
On Hamas:
"Secondly, many Palestinian people turn to Hamas not necessarily because they support terrorism (though many do), but because Fatah and the PA are so hopelessly corrupt and craven to outside control."
But Hamas is corrupt too...using money for infrastructure to rearm...
It's just that people are more OK with that form of corruption, since it directs their anger outward at Israel, rather than inward at Hamas, when really, it's better served being directed at both...less to Israel (ONLY to the extent they shouldn't support terrorism, otherwise, they have reasons to be angry, of course) and more to Hamas (who seem quite content to keep the circle of violence and inconsequential wars going so long as it keeps them in power, no matter how destructive it is to Gazans.)
"Given limited options, many Palestinians therefore turn to Hamas to express their displeasure with the legitimate Palestinian organization."
Then as my title would suggest, we need to stop this nonsense about describing a sort of unified "Palestinian Authority," as if these factions are actually unified.
The closest they come to being unified is in violence towards Israel, which isn't productive for anyone, since terrorism is bad in every respect for the Palestinians, hurts innocent Israelis, and any war, as the 50 Day War just showed, will ALWAYS lead to absolute destruction and horrific suffering for the Palestinians, far more so than the Israelis, at least in material terms and, as of right now, body count.
They're not united...so they need to stop being treated as such in coverage.
A "Unified" Palestinian Government? I Think Not...
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