Quote Originally Posted by Tribesman View Post
Surely any reasonable person can see that most of the Israeli and Palestinian parties are an obstacle to peace .
Aye.

And they have constituencies, vested interests and bureaucratic power to help them stay in the saddle. And if those aren't enough, the 'enemy' can always be counted on to do something profoundly stupid to stoke up the fire and underpin the most radical and useless factions on both sides.

There is even a computer game about these aspects of the conflict: Peacemaker. Among other things, the game demonstrates that positive developments and deals in the Middle East are often blocked by internal divisions of the parties concerned, whereby the radical wings destroy whatever sensible initiative the moderate wings come up with.