Reply #8: I'm all for non-violent methods

[holdencaufield]

But... how about sitting down and just talking with the intent of coming up with a compromise? Isn't that peaceful?

The evolution of the Arab/Israeli conflict has been one of ever decreasing violence and casualties. Beginning in '48 with traditional open warfare with uniformed soldier, tanks, planes, etc. They Arab States (and Iran) finally gave up on that after '73 because they could no longer sustain the casualty and materiel losses they were incurring. And even though Iran still threatens to revive it, that is not going to happen. National states don't stand a chance against Israel in traditional combat.

The next phase was came to be known as "terrorism" (although this term is highly misleading because people are clearly not terrified by it). It was however a traditional insurgency -- beginning with PLO hijackings and bombings in the '70s and leading to today's suicide bombings and rocket attacks. This decreased the violence to the point where the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is now among the LEAST violent (in terms of casualties) of more than 30 ongoing military conflicts currently taking place around the world. Effective Israel counter-measures, such as the security wall and continued naval blockade of Gaza have reduced the effectiveness of insurgency operations to acceptable rates to the majority of the Israeli public. However, it has not brought the Israelis and Palestinians any closer to establishing a compromise solution. In fact, the continued campaign of violence has made average Israelis more intransigent to compromise than at any time in the past.

Now, the idea is to morph the conflict again and play it out in the court of International Justice (UN, ICJ, civil suits, etc). I for one applaud this for two reasons, 1) it should (theoretically at least) bring the casualty rates down to nearly zero. If there no rocket or suicide bomber attacks -- there is no retaliation. Settler on Palestinian violence incurs significantly fewer casualties per year than occur over Fourth of July weekend in Compton. And 2) It has absolutely no chance of impacting Israel in any substantial way. The UN is already well-establish as being the world's largest manufacturer of anti-Israel resolutions, none of which have any more relevancy than your daily horoscope. The UN is a toothless, irrelevant player in this conflict.

As the author point out, however

"Abbas now risks losing the sympathy of a majority of Israelis who support the two-state solution and are ready for far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians."

This is very true, this constant barrage of irritation, de-legitimization rhetoric and para-legal wrangling will continue to erode the support for a peace settlement among the Israelis who support it until it reaches a point in the future that Palestinians will literally have no one willing to bargain with them.

Struggles of this kind only ever end in one of two ways -- 1) the "oppressed" become militarily strong enough to force surrender or compromise onto the "oppressor" -- OR -- 2) the "oppressed" negotiate an acceptable solution with the "oppressor" that leaves a path eventual resolution of the conflict. The Palestinians (for the most part) fully understand now that they will never achieve the first kind of resolution -- they should be positioning themselves for the second.