How can one ever disagree with such clear sighted reasonable logic! Something has to change, given the current status quo and intractable leadership can only ever produce more of the same, which can only ever inflame the situation.

One can't put out a forest fire by pumping kero on it, which then adds to the threat for more folks in the path of the conflagration? Who then are prime candidates for ever increasing expansion of hostilities that can only ever result in sorrow!
Alan B.

Resolution 242 recognised that Israel had occupied the west bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan heights as a defensive measure against Arab aggression.

242 traded the return of the land occupied for peace, with a pre condition being that Syria, Jordan and Egypt recognize the right of Israel to exist and the 1948 borders. To this day only Egypt has done so, with Israel withdrawing from the Sinai in response.

Similarly Hamas and the PLO while still insisting on the withdrawal of Israel to the 1948 borders, still refuse to recognise Israel or the 1948 borders, and so it goes completely against the UN resolution to insist on Israel's withdrawal without concessions from the Palestinians.

Finally, since 1967 nearly 50 years ago, Israel's population has more than tripled with about 650 000 settled in the West Bank, and there are serious doubts that the Palestinians would honor any neutrality in Jerusalem's old city.

Negotiations need to be entered into without any silly pre condition