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The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

The long conflict between Israel and Palestine has, for better or worse, become the world's conflict. It permanently destabilizes the Middle East, blocks the settlement of urgent crises, and intensifies looming threats to the West.

And in this respect, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim.

When all is said and done, it looks like the Palestinians have been massively robbed and abused, and are engaged in a desperate struggle for survival and liberation. Israel, on the other hand, would appear to be conducting an imperialistic campaign of oppression supported and substantially armed by the most powerful nation on earth.

The western mantra is that Israel seeks negotiations without preconditions, while the Palestinians refuse. The opposite is more accurate.

Palestinian people are in love with life.

When armed people from Hamas and armed people from Fatah are standing opposite each other, there is more likely to be a confrontation amongst them.

It seems Palestinians can't win. The language of peace negotiations has always been predicated on a representation that Palestinians are violent and that is why Israel behaves as it does.

Needless to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is ahead.