Abu Wabu

David Frum explains Real Realism to the I Surrender Group:

Tony Blair suggests that the failure to solve the Palestinian problem enflames and radicalizes the Middle East. This suggestion is not totally false. But it raises this question: Of all the dozens and hundreds of ethnic and territorial disputes to roil our planet since 1945, why is this one so uniquely unsolveable? Germans do not blow themselves up in the streets of Gdansk to protest Polish rule over Danzig. Greeks do not hijack schoolbuses full of Turkish schoolchildren to demand the return of Smyrna. Bolivia does not wage endless war against Chile to revise the outcome of the war of the Pacific.

The Arabs could have had peace with Israel on easy terms at any time since 1949. They have persistently refused it. The Palestinians could have had a state in the West Bank and Gaza at any time since 1967. They have disdained that offer too.

Might it not be closer to the truth to say that Arab radicalism is the ITAL cause END ITAL of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – not the result of it? There is no peace because Israel’s neighbors – and too many of the world’s Muslims – cannot accept the right of a non-Arab, non-Muslim minority to live unsubjugated in the Middle East. That is the true “core” of the dispute, and it cannot be fixed by negotiation.

Emphasis mine. It's the most lucid description of the problem that I've read in years.