I stir well clear of this one as I don’t know anything significant about it from first-hand experience.

Here is a well-turned piece by Tom Phillips, my old colleague from the FCO and its handling of Balkan problems in 1999-2001 and then UK Ambassador to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. He lists 10 factors that individually and cumulatively point to unending deadlock.

Read the whole thing.

I have attempted to post a comment:

I am a former FCO colleague of Tom Phillips (from the late 1990s, dealing with Balkan issues).

The key one is (in my view) Rule 6: “It’s all about Jerusalem and the Right of Return”

There is always something trite about reductionist/essentialist arguments, but they nonetheless get to something really important. What IS this problem really ‘about’?

As noted by other commenters, for Israelis this issue is about identity in a pretty direct sense – do they even exist as a coherent community, or not? Much Arab/Islamist opinion (now articulated in an extreme form by the Iran regime) says that they should not exist as the basis for a distinct state as currently constituted.

Given what happened in Europe in the mid-C20 it is not surprising that the Israel side feels that it has little room for manoevre when it comes to making concessions that might in a slippery slope way call Israel’s very existence into question, de facto or de jure.

I recall President Izetbegovic telling me that the Bosniac/Muslim community in Bosnia was so small (some 2 million people) that it could not afford "ethnic disarmament" for fifty years until it was quite sure that its neighbours (Serbs/Croats) were not bent on scattering it.

The underlying dynamic here too is therefore simple. Neither side sees any advantage in "ethnic disarmament".

The emerging Arab/Islamist mainstream is content for Israel’s resistance to erode over time by creating an endless existential unpleasant if not violent uncertainty. The Israeli leadership responds by digging in hard: it finds no propsect of even finding let alone parking on a safe place that guarantees Israel’s very existence. The Palestinians are collateral damage.

The article spots this on Rule 9: "[Israel] will face eventual extinction if it does not make its peace with the locals rather than continue to rely on its overseas backers (for the US now read Christian Europe then). So the Arabs can wait."

Railing against Washington does not help. It is understandable and arguably good that if the Americans are forced to choose between a country that practises some form of substantive democracy/pluralism and a whole range of countries that are substantively undemocratic, openly homophobic and/or national socialist, it will choose the Israel option.

The best way to create a context within which Israel can be compelled to look for strategic compromises is to democratise the Middle East and give citizens there some direct stake in a reasonable peace process and growing shared prosperity.

Unfortunately the world for 50 years has accepted the worst and most extreme forms of Arab undemocracy, not least in Saudi Arabia itself. In short, a policy of "the worse the better" suits too many capitals. Thus Rule 10.