From Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy:
Is the discourse we are conducting - if indeed we are conducting any discourse among ourselves and with our interlocutor - legitimate at all? Ever since the territories were occupied a public debate has been going on here about their future and what is being done there. The questions have come and gone, all of them in the same cursed vein: To give? To concede? Under what conditions? In exchange for what? The settlements - yes or no; the roadblocks - yes or no; the assassinations, the arrests, the starving, the closure, the encirclement, the curfew, the exposure, the torture, the freedom of movement, the choice or the ritual - yes or no.
Gideon Levy gets it. The whole idea that Israel would be doing some kind, benevolent act by relinquishing even some of its territories that it took by military force in 1967 is a matter of conventional thinking in the US, among both political parties. Forgotten is the principle that it is simply criminal to take and hold land taken by military force.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his spokesmen are boasting of having taken down a number of roadblocks, and the deputy director general in charge of frequencies at the Communications Ministry is considering whether to "give" the Palestinians a second mobile telephone network after the government has piled up conditions - Goldstone in exchange for Wataniya, the cellular phone operator.
Where does this right come from? Just as a rapist does not have the right to discuss carrying out his nefarious scheme, and the robber cannot haggle over the conditions under which he will return his loot, the occupier, the taskmaster, the jack-booted soldier and the exploiter cannot discuss the conditions under which they will carry out their deeds. This is a blatantly immoral discussion. The discussion by free people of the fate of other people under their rule is just as legitimate as the discussion by slave-runners or human traffickers. The only legitimate discussion is one that intends to end the situation, immediately and unconditionally....
where did we get the gall to decide the fate of another people?
Read the whole thing
As Levy points out, those decisions include where people can worship, and even, in the case of Gaza, who is fed and not fed.
It is absurd that such things are a matter of negotiation, of haggling.
This is accepted, even by the Obama administration. So of course, the administration presses Arab nations to have favorable economic ties to Israel, even as Israel refuses to put a stop to the expansion of the settlements. Even as Israel continues it siege of Gaza, now going on 3 years, that has produced an economy where 75% of its inhabitants (including children) suffer from nutritional deficiencies.
This is not the kind of thinking that will lead to peace. So far it has gotten nowhere. There is no reason to believe that will change. I believe that a better approach would be to insist on basic human rights for all.