Bubette,
Please let's not drag this thread down by adopting extremist positions based on one side's propaganda. There are Palestinian factions who do not want peace with Israel. There are still Palestinians who want to continue the armed struggle to achieve much more ambitious aims. They must be defeated - but that defeat must be achieved without contravening civilised norms or international law.
But to claim that this is the overall Palestinian position, or to say that Arafat doesn't want peace is simply wrong. Israeli propaganda may paint Arafat in a particular light, but Oslo alone demonstrated that he had a sincere desire for compromise and peace. (One doubts whether Sharon is as committed to a just and peaceful solution). But it is unreasonable to expect any Palestinian leader to accept peace on any terms - they have their own minimum terms which will have to be met. Something approximating to a return to 1967 borders, with the removal of the illegal settlements and the fence, is the compromise most likely to be acceptable to the majority of Palestinians. On the Israeli side, the minimum acceptable demand is for guaranteed security.
Liam Gallagher,
I don't understand your analogy at all. If I'm Israel (my home is built on land which was seized from you - not lifetimes ago, but when my Dad was a young man) then I'm the one in the position of power and I'm the one dictating the terms. And while you've been making a nuisance of yourself, I've beaten the crap out of you (and your neighbours) again and again, until you're a homeless cripple. You still continue to annoy me and stick your tongue out at me, and though you'd really like my allotment, I'm deciding that I'll give you that little patch of rough ground behind the garden shed, and that I'll stop beating you halfway to death every time I see you, if you promise to just stop annoying me.
But that's just silly.
The fact is that the kind of approach I outlined (backed by force, remember, and dictated from a position of strength) has proved successful in the only real world examples of where terrorism has actually been defeated.