It's a mess - and the media seems to be anti-Israel and pro-Palestine, this despite one is a liberal democratic country and the other.....isn't.
One step would be to give Palestine defined borders and the status of a true country that Israel must not encroach upon - their own Government needs to crack down on the radicals who think it's their god-given right to build where-ever the hell they want.
....but it'll just drag on for ever....
As far as I'm aware it does have defined borders. The issue is that it doesn't like them! Israel only encroaches when it feels the need (rightly or wrongly) to defend itself.
Again, we need a better plan.
(For clarity, I don't know what the better plan is...)
I agree with you on settlements, even though Israel would dispute their illegality. That is an interesting stand point because by so doing they are going against the opinion of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, The International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Court of Justice. Given that, if it ever was tried in a court you'd have to say Israel will most likely lose! Most (not all) of the people that live in the settlements are religious zealots and scare the hell out of me. However they try and dress up their reasons, they never sound convincing. They are doing it purely (IMO) to cause problems.
(As an aside, this issue is also why I don't like proportional representation. They have this in Israel, and the country is pretty much 50:50 in terms of right and left. Therefore for any of the main parties to form a coalition they need the help of the much smaller parties, some of which end up with a disproportionately high level of power because if they don't get their way they pull out of the coalition, thus forcing a general election. If those parties happen to be very right wing religious parties not much will happen in terms of stopping settlements.)
However, I think a good start would also be for Hamas to do a number of things:
1. Stop spending all the aid money it receives from the US and EU on arms and actually build some infrastructure.
2. Stop broadcasting TV shows like
this teaching hate to the next generation of palestinians.
3. Stop sending rockets over to Israel on a near constant basis. (We in this country only hear about them when Israel retaliates.
Click here for a full list.)
Please also bear in mind that the sticking point for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian National Authority (i.e. the West Bank) is that they want a two state solution that is at odds with Israel's two state solution. Israel want a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. Abbas wants a Palestinian state and a state of Israel that isn't Jewish and where Arabs also have the right of return. That seems a bit unfair to me.
Whatever the issues, this is not an easy one to deal with.