I would think, if Israel weren't just finding excuses not to deal with the Palestinians, that the obvious solution would be to work with the PA, who is proving more than willing to work so long as the boneheadedly obvious move of ejecting the illegal settlers is met, then once they've been legitimized, steamroll Hamas out of Gaza and put the PA in there, too.

Recognizing the PA as a sovereign state would disarm Hamas, or at least marginalize them, but so long as Israel doesn't, Hamas' way seems like the only viable alternative for the Palestinian people to get some measure of justice, at least from their perspective

Afterall, Asymmetric warfare works great... vs invading forces.  You can call Israel  an invading force, but the reality is... they have nowhere to go.  It's not like Afghanistan where the US can just go back to the US.

Asymmetiric warfare is completely useless in this case.  A better solution would be to get statehood at whatever cost you could, petition for more support via the UN while building up powerful allies and armies, and eventually wait for when you overtake Israel in conventional forces and take them out.

Why would the PA want to negoiatie right now?  Afterall Hamas is more popular in gaza.  They were elected, as far as I can tell fairly.

Ok, so the PA makes a deal with Israel.  This would be a pretty bad deal, if you've read the leaked papers (have you seen those by the way).

Even if it wasn't though, you'd still get basically nobody happy about it.  People would move to support Hamas more, and not  less.

The PA only stands to lose power by agreeing to a deal now.

As for Israel making a deal with the PA.  They basically would be forced to if Hamas didn't exist.  Not because they wanted to, but because they'd have no excuse not to, to the international community.

I agree that the PA stands to lose from a deal made under Israel's current terms. Israel's got to man up, share Jerusalem, tell the settlers to take a hike, and then they'd have a perfectly viable deal that i think the Palestinian people would be willing to go for, one that could delegitimize Hamas if they made it.

The ball's in Israel's court here. If they don't move, then support for the PA will collapse in the West Bank too, and it'll be Intifada all over again.

I dunno, afterall look at the camp david accords.  That fell apart basically because they didn't think the Palestinians would accept it.  Don't see what has changed since... outside a further support for more radical proposals.

Aside from that as for support of the PA collapsing... I'm not sure Israel doesn't want that to happen.  I mean the PA is basically the only thing keeping a good face on things.  If Hamas ends up taking over all of Palestine, i'd say palestine loses a LOT of sympathy and when moderates from Palestine are ready to come to the table, the alleged current deals will look advantageous.

The actual Palestinian people have nothing but worse prospects as it drags on, which is why it's sad that neither party in Palestine benefits from making a deal now... except MAYBE hamas if we legiatmized them.

While Israel doesn't benefit from making a deal now either, but would benefit long term. (Though at the current population suffering which is a negative.)

A deal won't be made, because it doesn't benefit any of the principal leadership parties and would only benefit the people.

Heh, i'm fairly anti-Israel and even i wouldn't have thought that Israel would be willing to spit on the PA just to delegitimize them and weaken their bargaining power. I'm under the assumption that the Israelis want peace as much as the Palestinians do, though i suppose given that Israel is just leaning more and more to the right as time goes by, that may not be the case (considering that outright nutjobs like Lieberman can hold positions of authority...)

What will defeat Israel in the long run, of course, is demography. In 30 years or so Jews will be the minority, and unless they take radically nondemocratic action (which would, of course, lead to further international condemnation), they'll lose the State of Israel democratically, and i would hope that that at least has bearing on the minds of the Likud folks, even if a more humanitarian motive for peace eludes them.

I think the Israeli's want peace as much as the Palestinians.  I just think none of the government officials representing any of them see an advantage to peace.

Heck, I would say I think the average Israeli probably wants peace a bit more even though they have less to gain from it.  Maybe factions like this exist, but i've never heard of any mainstream "Palestine shouldn't exist at all" factions.

That Israel is floating right (and understandably so) basically is why if I were the Palestinian's i'd deal as fast as I could.  (While if I were an individual palestinian i'd try and do whatever i could to leave and never comeback.  Sign papers saying I renounce all citizenship claims, whatever I don't care.)

As far as I know (which maybe means nothing at all).

Fatah still does not recognize Israel as a legitimae, Jewish state, and it is one of the main reasons that the negotiatons don't go anywhere.

And I do realize that the Israeli government is also at fault for the slow proccess.

All i'm really saying is that the conditions are the ripest they've been in a long time right now. Whatever Fatah's stance on Israel's right to exist may be, they are making concessions on matters like the Settlers to try and get a deal going, and are doing a very good job of keeping things internally stable on their side of the line, and if Israel doesn't act, it's just going to lead to a further resurgence of Hamas if the Palestinians get the idea into their head that Israel can't be negotiated with

Also, as for the "Demographic timebomb".

New reserach actually shows that's not an issue.  Jewish birthrates are actually rising, and arab birthrates falling in Israel proper.