TW: I posted earlier on related topics (http://treylaura.blogspot.com/2008/10/israel-olmert-speaks-frankly-on-his-way.html). There are radicals on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Not are radicals are equal but both have a vested interest in preventing a peace settlement between the two sides. Until and unless the Israeli government is able and willing to end the expansion of settlers into the West Bank, there will be no sustainable peace in that area.
From the Economist:
"THE policy proclaimed by young Jewish settler-militants on the West Bank is called “Price Tag”. Whenever the Israeli army tries to dismantle settler outposts—even individual caravans or huts—that have not been authorised by the Israeli authorities, the militants retaliate violently. Not necessarily in the same place; they may hit Palestinians or soldiers somewhere else. They stone cars, smash windows, burn olive trees and fields. They attack villagers and shepherds, and tangle with the army and police.
Their aim is to persuade Israelis that no further forcible dismantlement of Jewish settlements is possible. When Ariel Sharon was prime minister, he did it once, in 2005, in the Gaza Strip and northern bits of the West Bank, evacuating 21 settlements, against little hard resistance. When Ehud Olmert, who succeeded him, demolished nine buildings at Amona, in 2006, thousands resisted. Now passive resistance is bolstered by physical retaliation.
...For decades the Israeli establishment has been flaccid in the face of the settlers. But [Livni] has a chance to build on the changing thinking of her three predecessors. Ehud Barak (1999-2001) accepted the principle of swapping territory and sharing Jerusalem; Ariel Sharon (2001-06), actually evicted several thousand settlers; and Ehud Olmert (2006-08) now says that the land swaps must be equal, so that the Palestinian state ends up with the full equivalent of territory occupied by Israel in the war of 1967"
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