There's a war going on you know...

For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.
Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. For they do not want the Jews. Again and again - again and again - the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article5461544.ece

Does this statement stand up to scrutiny? I have lived through Oslo, camp David and two intifada's. I have seen Israeli intransigence on settlement building and I have seen seemingly endless Israel military operations. I have no love for Israel. However if your aim is a Palestinian state why launch rockets? why not instead start to build the infrastructure of state? Do you ever get the impression that the Palestinians have a tendancy to cut off their nose to spite their face. I mean really what did they expect?

I disagree. Some Palestinians have said they recognise Israel's right to exist. But Israel keeps building settlements on the West Bank. Israel keeps using legal loopholes to destroy Palestinian homes to clear land for more settlements. Israel refuses to allow East Jerusalem to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state. Israel has refused right of return to those who were driven from their homes in 1948.

The bottom line is that Israel wants all of the West Bank (including all of Jerusalem) to pretty much coincide with the area know as Eretz Israel. That has been the plan since day one.