Samson, in the comments, writes:
There are many reasons why these "peace talks" are doomed to failure, most of them well known to the readers of this blog and nearly everyone else. Yet another reason, not often acknowledged, is that the Arabs (and Palestinians in particular) hate the "peace process" and everything about it, including any possible outcome. Americans (well, at least their Presidents) have come to love the whole thing, right up to the handshakes on the White House lawn. For the Arabs, this is yet another humiliation, just the kind of thing they hate more than anything in the world - a bunch of Christian Americans and Europeans supervising their "negotiations" with the hated Jews! For the Palestinians, not particularly well respected among their Arab brethren to begin with, this is the ultimate sign of their inferiority. No wonder they resist direct negotiations.
More important, however, is the discordance between a negotiated settlement and victory, which is what they crave. The idea of 62 years of futile "struggle" followed by a negotiated peace that gives them anything less than 100% of Israel simply doesn't fit into their "narrative." Their national myth requires them to "recapture" "Palestine" with an armed struggle against the evil Jewish Zionists, not settle for the West Bank and Gaza (or less than that) without Jerusalem thanks to US or other third-party intervention. Not that obtaining a state was ever that serious a goal for them compared with destroying Israel in the first place, but even a deliberately deceptive negotiation in which the "agreement" is viewed as the first step in complete and ultimate victory is not enough. Let's face it, the Palestinians have a pretty shallow hold on nationhood to begin with, with little history of accomplishment other than terrorism and suicide bombers, and it just wouldn't do to have their moment of national birth come without martyrdom, armed struggle and victory.
It's not hard to see why they are jealous of the State of Israel, which really does have a long and remarkable pre-history, and whose moment of rebirth occurred as a genuine struggle for survival and nationhood against absurdly long odds. Not that further sacrifice or heroics was what the Jews wanted, needed or asked for, but just as the English can thank the Nazis for their "finest hour", so, ironically, can Israel thank the Arabs. Of course, when Olmert said in 2005 that "....We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies...." he had a point, but sadly, the war is not over, only transformed yet again into a different type of conflict. It cannot be resolved militarily at this point, but any attempt to end it by a "peace process" is doomed for the above cited and many other reasons.
Hazak ve'ematz my friends, the fight for Israel must continue.
