Reciprocity

There is at least one contradiction in the Palestinian position. On the one hand, the Palestinians complain about the "apartheid wall," namely the Israeli Security Barrier that keeps out their rampaging terrorists. But, on the other hand they insist that no Jews be allowed to live within their territories, i.e. they want apartheid! They oppose the separation of Jews and Arabs when it hurts them, but support the separation when it helps them. In other word they have no consistent moral position.
I believe in reciprocity, or in other words "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." There are 1 million (!) Arabs living in Israel, that is ca. 14% of the population. There are some 120,000 Jews living in "settlements" in the West Bank, which some call "Arab territory," among ca. 2.4 million Arabs, so that's ca. 5%. Now why can't the Arabs accept 5% Jews when the Jews accept 14% Arabs, why can't they tolerate any??
Many of the Arab settlements within Israel have grown tremendously over the past 60 years since the establishment of the State. And there has been no limitation of their growth and development. Such towns as Umm-al-Fahm in Wadi Ara, which started as villages 60 years ago, are now sizeable towns, with 20,000 inhabitants.
Similarly the Jewish towns in the West Bank, Ariel, Ma'ale Adumim, and Etzion, are all large enough now that it would be impossible to remove them, and no Israeli is going to suggest or accept that. You saw how difficult it was to evacuate the ca. 8,000 Israelis living in Gaza during the so-called "disengagement." You may have seen the violence in the evacuation of the small settlement of Homa a year ago. So you can imagine that it would be physically impossible to remove the ca. 50,000 people living in these three towns, it ain't going to happen!
That leaves two possibilities, either the PA agrees to the continued presence of Israeli towns/settlements in their territory, or these towns shall remain part of Israel by the retention of ca 5% of theWest Bank territory. Since Israel's claim to the West Bank is at least as valid as that of the Palestinians, it is a matter of negotiation and agreement where the line should be drawn in the "two-state solution."
Most Israelis would not trust the PA to have major Jewish settlements on their territory, subject to their laws or rather lawlessness, so the former option is definitely closed, and Israel must find some way to "persuade" the Palestinians or compensate them for taking this territory. It has been suggested that, since Pres Abbas has insisted that he will take nothing less than the total area of the West Bank, that some sovereign Israeli territory be transferred to the PA in order to compensate them. I can tell you that I doubt if any other country in the world (and few Israeli PMs) would contemplate making such a deal. In effect, there have been wars, they lost, too bad!
However, I doubt that the international community (i.e. read the Arabs/Muslims) and their erstwhile supporters, the EU and Russia, together with the Bush Administration, that is hot to do a deal, would accept such a fait accompli. So while PM Olmert struggles to keep Abbas involved and at the same time tries to minimize the damage to Israel and to his reputation, the outcome of this little Palestinian contradiction will remain unresolved.